Wall St futures rise as TSMC sparks semiconductor rally; financial earnings on deck

Jan 15 (Reuters) – U.S. stock index futures rose on Thursday after TSMC’s blowout quarterly results fueled a rally in semiconductor shares ahead of earnings from financial heavyweights.

Taiwan’s TSMC, the ‍world’s main producer of advanced AI chips, predicted robust annual growth and flagged more U.S. manufacturing capacity was in the works, lifting shares of U.S. chipmaking tool companies.

Applied Materials rose 6.2%, while Lam Research and KLA gained 5.4% and 5%, respectively.

BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, dipped 0.5% ‌in low premarket volume ahead of results. Goldman ‌Sachs fell 0.5% and Morgan Stanley rose 0.7% before their quarterly reports that would wrap up earnings from major Wall Street lenders.

Financial stocks have come under pressure this week on worries over the impact of a proposed one-year ​cap on credit card interest rates at 10%, even as other banking giants posted robust profit growth.

Investors are also rotating out ‍of richly valued tech and other ​growth stocks to more unloved parts of the market ​that hold attractive valuations.

S&P 500 materials and industrials indexes clinched new ‍peaks, while real estate and energy hit multi-month highs this week, as the tech-laden S&P 500 slid to a two-week low.

The S&P 400 mid-cap and Russell 2000 small also clinched new peaks this week.

At 5:03 a.m. ET, S&P 500 E-minis were up 22.5 points, or ‍0.32%, Dow E-minis were up 31 points, or 0.06% and Nasdaq 100 E-minis were up 190.5 points, or 0.74%.

With geopolitical risks and economic indicators ‍having little sway ‍over equities, investors are zeroing in on fundamentals ​as the fourth‑quarter earnings season gets underway, which ​may reveal ⁠whether the market’s historic rally still has legs.

Analysts ‌see S&P 500 companies reporting 8.8% growth in quarterly profit from a year ago, according to LSEG IBES data.

Meanwhile, the Labor Department’s data at 8:30 a.m. ET is expected to show weekly jobless claims rose to 215,000 in the week ended January 5.

(Reporting by Medha Singh in Bengaluru; Editing ⁠by Maju Samuel)