U.S. stock index futures edged lower on Friday after the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq logged six-session winning streaks, as a spate of encouraging economic data fueled a broad rebound led by heavyweight tech and growth stocks.

Market Snapshot

At 7:52 a.m., Dow E-minis were down 45 points, or 0.11%, S&P 500 E-minis were down 0.16% to 5,558.75 points and Nasdaq 100 E-minis were down 14.75 points, or 0.08%.

Pre-Market Movers

Applied Materials reported fiscal third-quarter earnings and revenue that beat Wall Street estimates after the stock market closed on Thursday. Chief Executive Gary Dickerson said in the earnings release that "the race for AI leadership is fueling demand." The chip equipment maker also said it expects fourth-quarter earnings to be between $2 a share and $2.36 a share, while Wall Street expected $2.14 a share. The stock was down 3.5% in premarket trading.

H&R Block stock was climbing 6.2%. The tax-prep company reported fiscal fourth-quarter earnings and revenue that beat Wall Street expectations. Management also announced a 17% increase in its quarterly dividend to 38 cents per share.

Texas Instruments was up 1.3% after the semiconductor companyannouncedthe U.S. Department of Commerce has proposed to give it up to $1.6 billion in direct funding through the CHIPS Act.

Copenhagen-listed shares   of Bavarian Nordic soared 16% Friday after the World Health Organization declared the spread of a new Mpox strain   aglobal public-health emergencythis week.  

Fox stock was rising 2.5% after an analyst at Wells Fargo double upgraded shares to Overweight from Underweight.

Germany-listed shares of Bayer jumped 11% after a Philadelphia appeals courtissueda favorable ruling for the agricultural science company in a suit that claimed it failed to put a cancer warning label on Roundup products.

Bumble stock dropped 2.7% after a TD Cowen analyst downgraded shares of the dating app to Hold from Buy.

Est é e Lauder was down 1.7%. An analyst at BofA Securities downgraded the cosmetics company to Neutral from Buy.

Market News

Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt sees Nvidia as big AI winner: ‘ You know what to do in the stock market ’

Eric Schmidt, who led Google for a decade, told Stanford students that, while he ’ s not one to give investment advice, he sees an obvious play in the stock market that doesn ’ t involve buying shares of his former employer.

Schmidt said, in a video that was posted by Stanford this week and subsequently removed, that big technology companies are planning for increasingly large investments into Nvidia-based artificial intelligence data centers, which could cost as much as $300 billion to build.

"I ’ m talking to the big companies, and the big companies are telling me they need $20 billion, $50 billion, $100 billion — very very hard," said Schmidt, adding that he ’ s a "close friend" to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

Schmidt suggested a huge amount of this spending was going to Nvidia, which makes the dominant data center AI chips, and has already seen revenue increase by more than 200% for three straight quarters. Google has developed chips called Tensor Processing Units ( TPUs ) , which could compete with Nvidia ’ s processors but are still at a much earlier stage.

Fortnite returns on iPhones in EU, globally on Android

Multiplayer shooter game Fortnite is available again on iPhones in the European Union and worldwide on Google's Android devices after a gap of four years, following legal measures by the EU, developer Epic Games said on Friday.

Fortnite, created by Epic, a U.S.-based studio, and backed by China's Tencent, the world's largest game studio, launched in 2017 and its last-player-standing, "battle royale" format became an instant hit, drawing in millions of dedicated players.