Screens display the Fed rate announcement as traders work on the floor of the NYSE in New York City, US, Oct. 28, 2026. <\/p>\n
Jeenah Moon | Reuters<\/p>\n
Stock futures were under pressure Thursday, weighed by the latest batch of corporate earnings. <\/p>\n
Nasdaq-100 futures<\/a> shed 1%, while futures tied to the S&P 500<\/a> slipped 0.2%. Dow Jones Industrial Average<\/a> futures hovered around the flatline. <\/p>\n Alphabet<\/a> lost 10% in premarket trading after it missed expectations on adjusted earnings per share<\/a> and revenue in the third quarter. The Google parent posted negative free cash flow of $9.07 billion. The company kept its full-year capital expenditures forecast at $195 billion to $205 billion.<\/p>\n Caterpillar shares slid 9%. While the industrial giant reported better-than-expected revenue and earnings for the third quarter, sales for its construction industries business came in slightly below estimates. <\/p>\n In contrast, Microsoft<\/a> was up 2.6% in premarket trade, after growth in the software giant’s Azure cloud infrastructure business helped it post beats on the top and bottom lines<\/a> in the fiscal first quarter, per LSEG.<\/p>\n Neoclouds fell as Microsoft’s lower-than-expected capital expenditures figure pointed to infrastructure partners taking longer to deliver data center capacity.<\/p>\n The results come as the artificial intelligence trade is in focus. AI stocks, such as the iShares Semiconductor ETF (SOXX)<\/a> and the Roundhill Memory ETF (DRAM)<\/a>, have been through a rough patch for most of October, only to perk up in recent days.<\/p>\n On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve decided to hold steady on rates<\/a>, leaving the central bank’s benchmark interest rate in a range between 3.75% and 4%. The decision to hold was widely expected as the Federal Open Market Committee issued a quarter-percentage-point hike in September. <\/p>\n