Friday the 13th Spooking the Stock Market

If you’re keeping score for stocks this week, it's two up days and two down days.

How will stocks react this Friday the 13th? It looks like U.S. futures are a little spooked. After the second-best rally of the year on Wall Street Thursday, sending the Dow up 181 points, futures are down 60 points Friday morning.

China reported first-quarter gross domestic product growth of 8.1%, less than expected and the slowest growth in about three years for the world’s No. 2 economy. Asian markets, however, closed mostly higher Friday, taking China’s slowdown in stride. There were whispers yesterday that the number would breach 9%.

Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) was out with its first-quarter earnings last night and the Internet giant, true to form, posted giant numbers. Profit came in at $2.9 billion, marking a rise of 61% from a year ago. Google shares are up fractionally in the pre-market, after closing 2.37% higher at $651.01 Thursday. Google also announced a 2-for-1 stock split.

But not everything was rosy in Google’s latest report card. Some analysts are focusing on a measure known as “cost-per-click.”  While the number of clicks by users on its ads increased 39% in the quarter, the prices advertisers paid for those ads were down 12% from a year ago. That decline was worse than anticipated and may reflect more mobile and tablet traffic.

JPMorgan (NYSE:JPM) has kicked off the first-quarter earnings season Friday morning for the major financials with a profit of $5.4 billion, handily beating Wall Street estimates. JPMorgan credited more mortgage loans and increased business in its investment banking unit.

JPMorgan is a Dow component and shares are fractionally higher before the opening bell.