– Wall Street indices finished yesterday’s trading mixed – Dow Jones and S&P 500 dropped while Nasdaq gained fueled by solid performance of Microsoft and NVIDIA

– US index futures caught a bid after close of the session following better-than-expected earnings release from Meta Platforms

– Meta Platforms jumped over 11% in the after-hours trading, following Q1 earnings release. Company reported Q1 EPS at $2.20 (exp. $2.03), revenue at $28.65 billion (exp. $27.65 billion) and revenue per user at $9.62 (exp. $9.30)

– Meta had 2.04 billion daily active users in Q1 2023 (exp. 2.01 billion) while monthly active users were reported at 2.99 billion – in-line with expectations. Meta’s Reality Lab reported a $3.99 billion operating loss and company expect this losses in the unit to increase this year

– Indices from Asia-Pacific traded mostly higher today – Nikkei and Nifty 50 gained 0.1%, Kospi moved 0.4% higher and indices from China traded up to 0.7% higher. S&P/ASX 200 was a laggard and dropped 0.4%

– DAX futures point to a slightly lower opening of the European cash session today

– The US House of Representatives passed a bill on spending cuts and debt ceiling. However, bill still needs to win backing in the Senate

– New prime minister of New Zealand Hipkins said that there will be no major tax changes in the upcoming budget announcement (May 18, 2023)

– Russian deputy prime minister Novak said that OPEC+ cooperation may be extended beyond this year (current agreement is valid until end-2023)

– Chinese industrial profits dropped 21.4% YoY in the January-March period. Profits were down 19.2% YoY in March alone

– Cryptocurrencies are trading higher – Bitcoin gains 1.6% while Dogecoin and Ethereum jump 1.7%

– Energy commodities trade little changed this morning – oil gains 0.3% while US natural gas prices drop 0.1%

– Precious metals benefit from USD weakness and trade higher – gold adds 0.6%, silver gains 0.7% and platinum jumps 1.1%

– AUD and NZD are the best performing major currencies while JPY and USD lag the most