Stock futures were slightly lower early Friday as traders pored through major bank earnings. S&P 500 futures nudged 0.1% lower, while Dow Jones Industrial Average futures gained marginally. Nasdaq-100 futures shed 0.4%. JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo kicked off third-quarter earnings for major financial firms on Friday. Shares of JPMorgan Chase were flat after the company posted its latest results. Wells Fargo rose 2.5% in the premarket. Citigroup is also set to report Friday. Besides fears over disappointing earnings and another potential rate hike, investors have also turned their concerns to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, which could potentially threaten global oil supply and prices. But Nancy Tengler, chief investment officer at Laffer Tengler Investments, believes that investors might be losing sleep for little reason. “We’ll have some companies that will disappoint but I think for the most part, earnings are probably going to surprise investors to the upside,” she said in an interview with CNBC. “Investors are too pessimistic. We expect that companies are going to be able to manage this pretty well.” Tengler added she thinks stocks will end the year with a rally, led by the technology and industrials sectors. On Friday, traders will also be watching for preliminary consumer sentiment data for October. All three major indexes ended the Thursday’s session in the red, with the Dow dropping more than 173 points. The S&P 500 slid 0.6% along with the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite. The major averages also snapped four-day winning streaks. Even though the three major averages ended Thursday with losses, they are each on pace for weekly gains. The S&P 500 is up 0.9%, while the Dow is up nearly 0.7% on the week. The Nasdaq Composite is the outperformer of the three, up 1% through Thursday’s close. This would be the third positive week in a row for the Nasdaq, and the second straight positive week for the S&P 500. The Dow is also set to snap a string of three straight weekly declines. Thursday’s losses came after the latest consumer price index report revealed that inflation still stubbornly persists, pushing bond yields higher. CPI rose 0.4% in September, and gained 3.7% from 12 months earlier. U.S. Treasury yields declined on Friday as investors digested this week’s economic data and assessed what it could mean for Federal Reserve interest rates. At 6:01 a.m. ET the yield on the 10-year Treasury was down by over 8 basis points at 4.625%. The 2-year Treasury yield was last more than 3 basis points lower at 5.0333%. Hong Kong stocks fall more than 2%, leading losses in the wider Asia-Pacific markets fell as investors digest China’s inflation and trade data for September. China’s consumer price index for September came in flat, lower than a 0.2% climb which analysts polled by Reuters expected. China also reported a 2.5% decline for its producer price index, compared to Reuters’ estimates of a 2.4% drop. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index traded 2.45% lower in its final hour of trade. China’s benchmark CSI 300 fell 1.05%, closing at 3,663.41. In Japan, the Nikkei 225 slipped 0.55% to close at 32,315.99 and South Korea’s Kospi fell 0.95% to end at 2,456.15. The S&P/ASX 200 in Australia traded 0.56% lower to close at 7,051. Oil prices on Friday rose nearly 4% after the U.S. tightened sanctions against Russian crude exports, exacerbating supply concerns in an already tightly balanced energy market. International benchmark Brent crude futures with December expiry traded 3.7% higher at $89.18 per barrel at around 7 a.m. ET, while front-month November U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures rose 3.9% to trade at $86.12 per barrel. Gold prices rose on Friday, set to mark their best week since mid-March as U.S. bond yields lowered, increasing the appeal of U.S. dollar-backed bullion as markets price in a chance that Fed’s rate increase cycle has come to an end. Spot gold rose nearly 1% to $1,886.40 per ounce. U.S. gold futures added 0.9% to $1,899.20.