Wall Street was headed toward more gains before the open today as some final earnings reports streamed in, according to the Associated Press. Futures for the S&P 500 rose 0.3% before the bell, while futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 0.4%.
General Motors (GM) shares dipped modestly after a poor performance by the Detroit automaker’s Chinese joint ventures forced it to write down assets and take a more than $5 billion restructuring charge. GM’s joint ventures in China used to be a reliable source of equity income for the company, but have swung to losses in the past year. GM shares were down less than 1% before the bell.
Salesforce jumped close to 13% after the cloud-based software maker reported a more than 8% jump in sales over the same quarter a year ago. The owner of Slack also pleased investors by raising some aspects of its full-year guidance.
Hormel, the maker of processed foods such as Spam and Dinty Moore stew, fell close to 3% after it came up short on sales and profit projections and issued a lukewarm forecast.
In energy trading, benchmark U.S. crude added 9 cents to $70.03 per barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, gained 16 cents to $73.78 per barrel.
In currency trading, the U.S. dollar rose to 151.11 Japanese yen from 149.59 yen.
