Stock Futures Signal Early Decline

Apple shares are lower, while Ford is rising.
By Sarina Penn ,

Wall Street was looking to drop at the open Thursday as buyers were sidelined by the newest influx of disappointing numbers.

Futures on the

S&P 500

were losing 10 points to 1369 and were more than 12 points below fair value. On the Nasdaq 100, futures recently slid 14.5 points at 1891 and were more than 22 points under fair value.

Helping to drag down tech shares was

Apple

(AAPL) - Get Report

, which comfortably bested analyst estimates last quarter with a 36% jump in profit, but the maker of Macs and iPhones also guided under earnings estimates for the current quarter. Shares were off 1.3% in premarket trading.

Amazon.com

(AMZN) - Get Report

, another tech titan, was slumping 6.2% after easing its 2008 operating-earnings forecast and reporting an essentially flat operating margin. Analysts were hoping for some improvement. For the first quarter, the Internet retailer reported better-than-expected earnings of $143 million on soaring sales of $4.13 billion.

Outside of tech,

Starbucks

(SBUX) - Get Report

was also losing ground on its soft guidance. The coffee seller said tough economic conditions should keep its customer-traffic numbers down and force a first-quarter profit drop to 15 cents a share form 19 cents last year. That's well under the consensus estimate. Shares were plunging 11.7%.

An early winner was

Ford

(F) - Get Report

, whose shares bounced 4.9% after the carmaker posted a surprise first-quarter profit of $100 million thanks to a robust showing in Europe and South America. That offset a loss in its North American segment, which itself was narrowed sharply from last year.

In the prior session, an uneven assortment of earnings had the major averages moving erratically throughout the day, though all three closed higher. In the end, the

Dow Jones Industrial Average

rose 43 points to 12,763, and the S&P 500 added 4 points at 1380. The

Nasdaq Composite

jumped 28 points to 2405, but still saw declining issues outpacing winners.

On the new day's economic docket are durable-goods orders, an important indicator of factory activity that's due out from the Commerce Department at 8:30 a.m. EDT. At the same time, the Labor Department should issue its weekly jobless claims report, and the Census Bureau is scheduled to release new-home sales at 10 a.m. EDT.

Among commodities, crude oil was losing 80 cents to $117.50 a barrel, and gold futures gave up $5.10 at $903.90 an ounce. The U.S. dollar climbed 0.9% against the euro at $1.5746 while weakening fractionally against the yen.

Treasury prices were little changed recently. The 10-year note was up 1/32 in price to yield 3.73%, and the 30-year bond was flat in price, yielding 4.49%.

Markets overseas were mostly in retreat. The Hang Seng Index in Hong Kong jumped 1.6% overnight at 25.681, but Tokyo's Nikkei 225 lost 0.3%. In Europe, London's FTSE 100 dropped 1.7%, Germany's Xetra Dax shed 0.7%, and the Paris Cac fell 1.4%.

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