Wall Street heads lower in premarket trading as tech stocks appear poised for more losses

By YURI KAGEYAMA and MATT OTT, AP Business Writers

Wall Street pointed toward more losses before the opening bell Tuesday, kicking off a holiday-shortened week of trading that will bring more earnings reports and some highly-anticipated economic releases.

Futures for the S&P 500 were down 0.5% in premarket trading, while futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average edged 0.3% lower. Futures for the technology-heavy Nasdaq tumbled 0.9%

Tech stocks have been waxing and waning with fluctuations in confidence over massive investments in AI, which appears to have carried over into this holiday-shortened trading week. All of Big Tech’s “Magnificent Seven” companies — Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon, Tesla, Google parent Alphabet and Facebook parent Meta Platforms — were down in premarket trading Tuesday.

U.S. markets were closed for Presidents Day on Monday.

Warner Bros. Discover shares jumped 2.5% after Netflix granted it a seven-day waiver that allows the studio to reopen takeover talks with Paramount Skydance. Previously, Warner’s leadership consistently has backed the offer from Netflix. Paramount Skydance shares rose 3.9% and Netflix was up 1%.

General Mills shares tumbled 3.4% after the packaged food giant trimmed what was already seen as a tepid forecast for 2026. The company said it expects a wider drop in organic net sales than previously forecast, resulting in a bigger decline in per-share profit.

Coming later this week is the government’s latest inflation report and the first estimate of how the broader U.S. economy performed in the fourth quarter.

Elsewhere, European shares were mixed after a quiet day in Asia, where most markets were closed for Lunar New Year holidays.

France’s CAC 40 ticked down 0.1% in midday trading, while Germany’s DAX was flat and Britain’s FTSE 100 picked up 0.2%.

Weak economic data for Japan appeared to be clouding sentiment in Tokyo, and a 5.1% decline for tech giant SoftBank Group also pulled shares lower. The decline follows a big rally after a resounding win for Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s ruling party in a Feb. 8 general election.

The Nikkei 225 slipped 0.4% to finish at 56,566.49.

Traders likely were locking in profits from the recent gains that took the Nikkei to record levels. Polls show Takaichi’s popularity is slowly slipping, as hopes for economic revival from her plans to increase government spending and cut taxes subside.

In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 gained 0.2% to 8,958.90, while India’s Sensex edged 0.2% higher. In Thailand, the SET added 1.4%.

In energy trading early Tuesday, benchmark U.S. crude rose 70 cents to $63.59 a barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, lost 16 cents to $68.49 a barrel.

The U.S. dollar slipped to 153.08 Japanese yen from 153.51 yen. The euro cost $1.1829 down from $1.1852.

The price of gold fell nearly 2% to $4,951 an ounce and silver was down 4.5%. to $74.51.

Bitcoin fell 1.4% to just under $68,000.

Yuri Kageyama is on Threads: https://www.threads.com/@yurikageyama