Wall Street stocks fall on hopes of more economic growth

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Wall Street stocks fall on hopes of more economic growth

Stock futures fell Monday morning to give back some gains after the S&P 500' s best week since July, with investors' concerns over elevated inflation offsetting hopes that more companies will follow the lead of the big banks last week and post strong quarterly earnings results.

Contracts on the Dow Jones fell about 100 points, or 0.3%, with about two hours before the opening bell. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq opened lower targets also. The moves tracked a drop in overseas assets after China reported its slowest GDP growth rate since the third quarter of last year, as energy shortages and property-sector turmoil dragged down economic activity in the world's second-largest economy.

This week, investors are looking forward to a packed slate of corporate earnings results, which will help offer more insights into how companies across diverse industries have navigated inflation trends, widespread labor scarcities and lingering virus related disruptions. Remarks from some executives further confirmed the weight of these issues. Fastenal FAST CEO Daniel Florness told the earnings call last week that product and shipping price inflation is not just high, it's brutally high. But an otherwise positive start to the earnings season last week helped fuel optimism that corporate profits held up a more robust than anticipated across the board, even in the face of a myriad supply-related challenges. Big banks from Morgan Stanley MS to Bank of America BAC and Goldman Sachs GS handily topped estimates in their third quarter results last week, and many executives of these companies offered upbeat assessments of the state of the U.S. consumer or the demand engine of the U.S. economy. These remarks had helped affirm trends seen in recent economic data, with U.S. retail sales unexpectedly posting a monthly gain of 0.9% in September, government data last week showed.

What an amazing week! The banks have done great that started to relieve a little bit of people's concerns, especially when you had the CEOs of the banks saying consumer looks strong, Victoria Fernandez, crossmark global investment strategist, told Yahoo Finance Live on Friday. And I think this is going to be a key for the market going forward. If the consumer is there and they're willing to spend — which I see as we've seen in the month of September when retail sales started to come back a little bit — then I think that gives a little more optimism to the market that as we continue to reopen, as earnings are strong, the consumer will be there, and the equity markets will continue to trend higher. As of Friday, the expected earnings growth rate for the S&P 500 was 30%, according to FactSet. That figure — based on both anticipated earnings of companies that have shown so far and actual earnings from companies — represents an increase from the preceding week, when the anticipated earnings growth rate for the third quarter stood at about 27.6%

ET Monday: Stock futures point to a lower open meeting with shares trading after a major fall of the Open Index.

Here's where markets traded before the opening bell of Monday morning:

Emily McCormick is a reporter for Yahoo Finance.