U.S. stock futures were mixed on Thursday as Wall Street tried to find some traction following another tough session. Dow Jones Industrial Average futures were up by 80 points, or 0.2%. S&P 500 futures were unchanged, while Nasdaq 100 futures ticked 0.4% lower. Shares of Walgreens Boots Alliance added more than 2% before the bell after the pharmacy operator posted a fiscal first-quarter earnings beat. Wall Street is coming off a dismal trading session, with the Dow losing nearly 300 points and the Nasdaq Composite posting its fourth straight loss. The S&P 500 also fell sharply. Mega-cap tech stocks such as Apple are underperforming to start the year as overstretched valuations and uncertainty around when the Federal Reserve will begin to cut rates have investors worried that markets have gotten overly optimistic. Apple shares are down more than 4% this week. The tech giant on Thursday was downgraded by Piper Sandler two days after Barclays lowered its rating on the tech giant. Apple stock fell 0.7% in premarket trading. The recent performance on Wall Street comes in stark contrast to how the market ended 2023. The S&P 500 ended last year up more than 24% while enjoying its best weekly win streak going back to 2004. “You’ve got positioning, you’ve got sentiment, all of that is pretty stretched,” Anastasia Amoroso, chief investment strategist at iCapital, said on CNBC’s “Closing Bell” on Wednesday. “And I think after this really strong finish to the year that we’ve had, we’re just due for some of the give back.” On Thursday, the latest ADP report release showed that jobs grew stronger than expected in December. Companies added 164,000 jobs for the month, higher than the 130,000 Dow Jones estimate. U.S. Treasury yields ticked higher Thursday following the release of fresh employment numbers. The yield on the 10-year Treasury was up by 8 basis points at 3.989% after crossing the 4% mark briefly on Wednesday. The 2-year Treasury yield was last up by 6 basis points at 4.374%. China led losses in Asia-Pacific on Thursday, followed by Japan stocks which resumed trading after an extended New Year’s holiday during which the country witnessed an earthquake and an accident involving Japan Airlines. China’s CSI 300 index fell 0.92% to 3,347.05, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index inched up 0.06% by the last hour of trading. Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 shed 0.53% to close at 33,288.29, but the broader Topix reversed losses to close 0.52% higher at 2,378.79, as Japan kicked off its first day of trade in 2024. South Korea’s Kospi ended down 0.78% at 2,587.02, and the small-cap Kosdaq fell 0.61% to 866.25. In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 retreated further, losing 0.39% to close at 7,494.1. Oil prices rose Thursday, extending the previous day’s sharp gains on concerns about Middle Eastern supply following disruptions at a field in Libya and heightened tension around the Israel-Gaza war. Brent crude rose 62 cents, or 0.8%, to $78.87 a barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures rose 71 cents, or 1%, to $73.41. Both benchmarks rose by around 3% to settle higher for the for the first time in five days on Wednesday, with WTI seeing the biggest daily percentage gain since mid-November. Gold prices rebounded from a two-week low on Thursday, as a pullback in the dollar lifted demand among investors who are looking ahead to a U.S. jobs report that could shed more light on the Federal Reserve’s next move on interest rates. Spot gold was up 0.2% at $2,043.60 per ounce after hitting its lowest since Dec. 21 on Wednesday. U.S. gold futures rose about 0.5% to $2,052.0 per ounce. “A weaker dollar and slightly lower U.S. rates are lifting gold. It seems like the market participants took the Fed minutes as slightly more dovish,” said Giovanni Staunovo, analyst at UBS.