US equity futures are flat on the final trading session of the week, with Tech lagging, as traders hold off on big bets ahead of the weekend, with the fragile truce in the Middle East keeping geopolitical risk front of mind. Overnight, the US said Iran talks will continue, a positive step amid the recent escalation near the Strait of Hormuz (then again the market never reacted negatively to the latest strikes in the first place). As of 7:45am ET, S&P futures are flat and Nasdaq futures are down 0.2%; pre-market, Mag 7 stocks are mixed: META +1.8%, MSFT +0.9%, while NVDA and AAPL are down 0.6% and 0.4%, respectively. Notably, META has been outperforming since the announcement of its Muse Spark AI model and its strategy for the cloud business. SemiAnalysis, whose "unbiased", often wrong but never in doubt, views at some point be investigated by a regulator, also struck a positive note on META’s AI development (here). Bond yields are 1–2 bp lower, and USD is mostly unchanged. Commodities are mixed: WTI is down 0.2%; base metals are higher, while precious metals are mostly lower. The US economic data calendar empty for the session. Next week includes June CPI, PPI data. Fed calendar empty for the session.
In premarket trading, Magnificent 7 stocks are mixed with Meta rising 3% after research firm SemiAnalysis posted a positive report on the social media giant’s AI compute business (Microsoft +0.4%, Amazon
