Pasteleosa: Stock market news live updates: Stock futures drop as Amazon, Apple shares fall after earnings

Stock futures dipped Thursday evening, with investors eyeing a couple of disappointing earnings results from Apple (AAPL) and Amazon (AMZN) that punctuated an otherwise solid quarterly reporting season from many major companies.

Contracts on the S&P 500 fell, pulling back after the blue-chip index set a record closing high on Thursday. Nasdaq futures underperformed amid the drawdown in the big technology names.

Amazon shares dropped in late trading after the e-commerce juggernaut missed third-quarter expectations and forecasted a jump in expenses in the fourth quarter due to supply chain disruptions and rising costs for labor, materials and freight. These factors are expected to generate "several billion dollars of additional costs" to Amazon in the current quarter, the company said in its earnings statement.

Peer tech giant Apple also disappointed Wall Street in its fiscal first-quarter results, with key iPhone sales missing expectations even following the launch of its latest iPhone 13 handset series. Shares of Apple's suppliers including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSM), Qualcomm (QCOM) and Broadcom (AVGO) also fell immediately following the results.

For Wall Street, the results appeared to vindicate concerns that mounting supply chain disruptions, labor costs and materials shortages were impacting companies of all sizes heading into the holiday season, and were creating challenges for corporations to keep pace with rising demand.

And for Apple, Amazon and some other technology companies, investors have been additionally fearful that these key members of last year's lucrative "stay-at-home" trade would be unable to maintain lofty growth rates following a pandemic-induced surge in their businesses. Amazon's sales grew 15% in the third quarter, slowing down markedly from 27% rate in the second quarter.

“I will agree, they are overvalued," Rebecca Felton, Riverfront Investment Group senior market strategist, told Yahoo Finance Live about technology companies on Thursday. "But remember valuation is a condition, not a catalyst. And the catalyst I think for technology is going to be the consistency both on the top and bottom line.”

Meanwhile, investors continued to digest a mixed batch of economic data results, which included a weaker-than-expected print on third-quarter gross domestic product. The report, while comprehensive in scope, still offered an only backwards-looking view of state of the economy. Some pundits suggested economic activity had already begun to pick up, helping to underpin companies' performance into the final months of the year and equity prices.

“I still think the best is yet to come,” Heritage Capital President Paul Schatz told Yahoo Finance on Thursday. “GDP for Q3 is going to be a trough. We’re going to have much stronger growth in Q4 and Q1 of next year, inflation is going to peak in the next six months, supply chain issues strongly moderate by early Q2 of next year. And this rising tide is going to lift most ships.”

“The economically sensitive trade, whatever you want to call it — reopening, reflation, inflation — that trade is very alive, very well and it’s not over,” he added.