U.S. stock futures were lower early Friday as the market indexes tried to avoid a fourth consecutive week of losses.
Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average implied an opening loss of more than 50 points. Contracts tied to the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite also traded in positive territory.
The drop in futures comes after the three major U.S. indexes held on to slight gains during a choppy session Thursday but were still negative for the week. The Nasdaq Composite slightly outperformed, gaining about 0.4%, and has also been the best performing index this week.
That outperformance for the tech-heavy index is a reversal from earlier during this market pullback. Much of September’s losses have been concentrated in mega-cap tech stocks, which carry a heavy weight in the indexes. Shares of Apple rose 1% on Thursday but were still down more than 19% from their recent closing high on Sept. 1.
Russ Koesterich, managing director and portfolio manager at BlackRock, said on CNBC’s “Closing Bell” that his team took profits in some high-flying tech stocks at the end of August and then were buying more cyclical stocks during the recent drop for the market.
“What we’ve been trying to do in recent weeks is take the cyclical exposure up a little bit … it’s not that we think tech is going to roll over. We still like the themes. But on a shorter-term tactical basis, we’re comfortable with the economy, we think we’re going to continue to see improvement, and we’re looking for names that are levered to that improvement,” Koesterich said.
The state of the economic recovery has become a hot topic in recent weeks on Wall Street, especially after the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg led many strategists to downgrade the chances for another relief package before the election. On Thursday, Goldman Sachs cut its fourth-quarter projection for gross domestic product growth to 3% on an annualized basis, down from 6%.
House Democrats are preparing a $2.4 trillion relief package that they could vote on as soon as next week, a source familiar with the plans told CNBC. The bill would include enhanced unemployment benefits and aid to airlines, but the overall price tag remains well above what Republican leaders have said they are willing to spend.
