Futures contracts tied to the major U.S. stock indexes held steady early Thursday after Wall Street notched a three-day winning streak.
Futures for the Dow Jones Industrials moved up 16 points, or 0.1%, to 30,643.
Futures for the S&P 500 gained 6.25 points, or 0.2%, at 3,829.75.
Futures for the NASDAQ Composite jumped 54.25 points, or 0.4%, to 13,448.50.
Apple rose 2% in pre-market trading after reports it is close to finalizing a deal with Hyundai-Kia to produce driverless cars. News that the two may be close to a deal comes after Hyundai said in January that it was in preliminary talks with the iPhone maker to develop a car.
Shares of EBay jumped more than 10% in early trading after beating on both the top and bottom lines and issuing a rosier-than-expected forecast for the first quarter.
PayPal gained nearly 6% after better-than-expected quarterly results, while Qualcomm slipped more than 6% after reporting revenues below consensus estimates for its fiscal first quarter.
The macroeconomic outlook remained in focus as traders prepared for the latest iteration of the Labor Department's jobless claims report. Economists polled by Dow Jones expect first-time claims to total 830,000 for the week that ended Jan. 30.
If claims were to come in as expected, it would mark a slight reduction from the prior week's 847,000 initial claims.
Overseas, in Japan, the Nikkei 225 slid 1.1%, while in Hong Kong, the Hang Seng index sagged 0.7%.
Oil prices lost 42 cents to $56.11 U.S. a barrel.
Gold prices retreated $16.20 to $1,818.90 U.S.