5 things to know before the stock market opens on Friday, April 28

Here are the top stories investors need to start their trading day:

After a big rally on Thursday – the Dow Jones and S&P 500 had their best days since January – it looks like stocks may end the week on a bruise. Futures indicated on Friday morning that investors weren’t too happy with the latest batch of tech dividends. Overall, while the companies are doing well against Wall Street expectations in this earnings period, they aren’t quite astonishing to investors, according to some market watchers. There are more quarterly results coming next week as well with big names like Ford, Starbucks and Warner Bros. among others. Discovery on deck. Follow live market updates.

For a minute there on Thursday, Wall Street loved Amazon’s earnings report, sending the tech giant’s stock up nearly 10% in after-hours trading. Revenue exceeded expectations, and its AWS cloud business posted a 16% increase in sales. Then things turned murky on the company’s earnings call, as executives gave a rather poor view of cloud revenue, noting that customers continued to curtail their spending in the current quarter. “As expected, customers continue to evaluate ways to improve their cloud spending in response to these challenging economic conditions in the first quarter,” said Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky. Stocks turned negative after that.

Shares of Intel, on the other hand, have been doing well in extended trading, even after the chipmaker posted the largest quarterly loss in its history. However, the results showed a very low limit. Wall Street expected a huge drop in revenue. Indeed, Intel reported just that, but its $11.7 billion top line still beat analyst expectations. Its revenue forecast for the second quarter also barely missed estimates. It’s fair to say the company is stuck in a rut as demand for PCs plummets, even though its stock is up more than 12% so far this year through Thursday’s close.

Hundreds of Bed Bath & Beyond locations, including the Buy Buy Baby stores, are about to close as the company winds through the bankruptcy process. But don’t expect them to remain vacant for long. Even with inflation and other uncertainties in the economy, retail space in malls and malls is a hot commodity. These cavernous Bed Bath locations can become massive gyms, dollar stores, or even be split up between multiple businesses. “In the past, I might have been more concerned if we went through something like this, but I’m not,” one retail industry expert told CNBC’s Melissa Rybko.

Low energy prices will dull. Exxon had a great first quarter. Its profits doubled during this period compared to the same period last year. In fact, the oil giant’s $11.43 billion in profits for the first three months is a company record for the first quarter. Increased production helped boost earnings, according to CFO Kathryn Michaels. She told Reuters, “We achieved a record in the first quarter, despite the fact that energy prices and refining margins fell slightly.” Rival Chevron also reported higher earnings that beat Wall Street’s expectations, even as its oil and gas production division’s profits fell by a quarter compared to the same period last year.

— CNBC’s Sarah Main, Annie Palmer, Keef Leswing, Melissa Rybko contributed to this report.

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