Futures subdued with earnings in full swing, Salesforce up on Elliot stake By Reuters

(Reuters) – U.S. stock index futures struggled for direction at the start of another big week for corporate earnings amid concerns about a recession, while Salesforce (NYSE:) rose on Monday as Elliott Management acquired a stake in the firm.

A slew of earnings in the coming weeks will also test the recent bounce in certain technology and growth stocks that took a large hit last year.

Concerns of a possible recession amid a high interest rate environment have hit growth-related sectors, driving major tech companies such as Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:), Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:) and Alphabet (NASDAQ:) Inc to lay off thousands of employees.

Companies which make up more than half the ‘s market value will report earnings in the next two weeks, with Microsoft, the second-largest U.S. firm by market value, posting results on Tuesday, Tesla (NASDAQ:) Inc and IBM (NYSE:) on Wednesday and Intel (NASDAQ:) on Thursday.

Shares of cloud-based software firm Salesforce Inc rose 4.0% in premarket trading to lead gains among Dow components after activist investor Elliott Management Corp made a multi-billion-dollar investment in the company, according to people familiar with the matter.

At 6:17 a.m. ET, were down 5 points, or 0.01%, were down 3.25 points, or 0.08%, and were down 5.75 points, or 0.05%.

Data recently has pointed to some signs of inflation cooling but has also highlighted a tight labor market, which is key for the Federal Reserve to continue its aggressive rate-hiking cycle.

Qualcomm (NASDAQ:) Inc and Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:) Inc climbed around 2% each, after brokerage Barclays (LON:) upgraded the chipmakers to “overweight” from “equal-weight”.

Payments firm PayPal Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:) fell 2.1% after Germany’s cartel office regulator said it had initiated proceedings against PayPal Europe over possible hindrance against competitors.