US pre-open: Futures slide amid heightened US-Iran tensions, deepening global chip rout
By Iain Gilbert
Date: Friday 17 Jul 2026
(Sharecast News) - Wall Street futures slumped early on Friday as the US carried out a sixth straight night of strikes on Iran, while a sell‑off in semiconductor names also weighed on major indices.
As of 1230 BST, Dow Jones futures were down 0.53%, while S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 futures had the indices opening 0.79% and 1.54% weaker, respectively.
The Dow closed 105.67 points lower on Thursday, taking a bite out of gains recorded in the previous session.
Stock futures headed south early on Friday after US Central Command said overnight that American forces had hit dozens of military targets, including logistics infrastructure and maritime assets, as its confrontation with Tehran escalates. The fragile truce agreed last month has now fractured, once again disrupting energy flows through the Strait of Hormuz, a corridor that typically handles around 20% of global oil shipments.
Elsewhere, Asian and European chip stocks were also under pressure early on Friday, extending the sharp sector‑wide sell‑off that hit Wall Street the previous day and setting a downbeat tone for the session. Heavy declines in Taiwan Semiconductor, SK Hynix, Samsung Electronics and other regional names rippled into Europe, where ASML, STMicroelectronics, and Infineon all traded lower. The moves closely tracked Thursday's slump in US semiconductors - led by steep falls in Arm and TSMC - and reinforced the belief that the global tech rout was now begining to broaden.
On the macro front, June building permits and housing starts data will be published at 1330 BST, as will last month's import and export price indexes, while June industrial production numbers were slated for release at 1415 BST, and a preliminary reading of July's University of Michigan consumer sentiment index will follow at 1500 BST.
No major corporate earnings were slated for release on Friday.
Reporting by Iain Gilbert at Sharecast.com
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