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Madrid - US index futures held steady, after equities capped their longest run of weekly gains since March amid optimism over corporate earnings.
S&P 500 Index contracts expiring in September slipped less than 0.1% to 2 166.25 at 6:30 a.m. in New York, after the gauge climbed for a fourth week. Dow Jones Industrial Average futures lost 4 points to 18 474.
The S&P 500 reached a seventh all-time high in 10 sessions on Friday, after going more than 13 months without a record. The advances came as companies showed signs of breaking a four-quarter-long decline in sales, fuelling optimism that a long-awaited rebound in earnings is at hand. Still, further stock gains may be harder to combine, according to Kully Samra, a client manager at Charles Schwab Corporation, which has $2.4trn in client assets.
"We’ll continue in this bull market, but we are in a mature phase and the argument around valuations has not gone away" Samra said from London. "Valuations will remain stretched so gains are much harder to make."
The rally took the S&P 500 up 6.4% this year, recovering from the slump after the UK vote to quit the European Union. Since its February low, it’s regained 19%, taking its valuation to more than 17 times estimated earnings for the next 12 months.
Better-than-forecast economic data have lifted odds of a Federal Reserve interest-rate increase, with traders pricing in a 45 percent chance of higher borrowing costs by December, up from just 12% at the start of July. The next Fed rate decision will be on Wednesday.
Companies including Texas Instruments, Sprint Corporation and Gilead Sciences are scheduled to report earnings on Monday. Profits and sales have broadly topped projections so far this season, and analysts have eased their estimates for declines in net income.
They’re now expecting a 4.5% slide in second-quarter profit at S&P 500 members, better than predictions for a 5.7% drop at the start of the season.
