Wall Street futures traded mixed on Friday as investors weighed the fallout from Nvidia's leadership shake-up and a prolonged global Microsoft outage. Despite the technology sector's recent turbulence, the major US indices remained on course for weekly gains, supported by a recovery in equities earlier in the week.
S&P 500 futures rose 0.24% to 7,633.75, while Nasdaq-100 futures slipped 0.03% to 28,375.75, according to market data at around 7 am GMT-6. The Dow Jones futures were also marginally higher in early trading. The divergence highlighted continued caution towards technology stocks, even as broader market sentiment showed signs of stabilisation.
The Microsoft outage added another source of uncertainty for technology investors. A disruption lasting more than 12 hours affected Outlook, Teams, Copilot and other Microsoft 365 services across businesses and government agencies worldwide.
Microsoft blamed server problems and said it had found no indication of malicious activity. The incident disrupted organisations across more than 70 countries, including airlines, financial firms and public institutions.
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The outage also disrupted Microsoft connectors used by OpenAI and Anthropic, highlighting how heavily AI services rely on infrastructure run by a handful of major technology companies. Microsoft shares fell 1.28 per cent in premarket trading, Reuters reported.
Nvidia was another stock weighing on investor sentiment. Its shares closed at $166.19 on Thursday, down 4.34 per cent, following the sudden resignation of CEO Jensen Huang. The stock had dropped to an intraday low of $148.80 before recovering some losses. It gained 1.63 per cent in premarket trading to reach $168.90.
Huang's exit has left investors questioning what it could mean for Nvidia's investments, business partnerships and position in the AI industry. CFO Colette Kress has taken over as interim CEO as the board looks for a permanent successor.
Even with these concerns, US markets were on course to end the week higher. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq were set for gains of around 3 per cent, while the Dow had risen nearly 2 per cent. If the gains held, the broader market would break a four-week losing streak.
Investors were also waiting for US Producer Price Index data for October, due on Friday. The figures could influence expectations for the Federal Reserve's December meeting, particularly after stronger consumer inflation data strengthened bets on another interest rate hike.
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