By TERESA CEROJANO and MATT OTT, Associated Press

Markets on Wall Street quietly hovered at record levels before the bell Friday with most of the attention on the latest corporate earnings reports and dealmaking.

Futures for the S&P 500, Dow Jones Industrial Average and Nasdaq all ticked up less than 0.1% before the bell.

A day earlier, the S&P 500 topped its all-time high set a week ago and the Nasdaq composite added to its own record set the day before.

Shares of Norfolk Southern jumped 4% on reports that it is in merger talks with Union Pacific to create the largest railroad in North America that would connect the East and West Coasts. The merger discussions began during the first quarter of this year, according to an AP source. Union Pacific shares ticked up 0.5%.

Shares of Chevron and Hess both got a boost on reports that their $53 billion merger was proceeding after Exxon Mobil’s arbitration challenge was rejected in Paris. Exxon Mobil’s had asserted that it had a contractual right to make an offer for Hess’ Guyana assets.

Chevron announced its deal for Hess in October 2023, less than two weeks after Exxon Mobil said that it would acquire Pioneer Natural Resources for about $60 billion.

Netflix dipped 1.6% overnight even after it beat Wall Street’s profit and revenue targets and raised its outlook. The guidance increase may have been lower than some investors were looking for, pushing them to collect profits on a stock that is up more than 40% this year.

Coming later Friday morning is the latest consumer sentiment report from the University of Michigan.

In early European trading, Germany’s DAX and Paris’s CAC 40 were both unchanged, while Britain’s FTSE 100 added 0.1%.

In Asian trading Japan’s Nikkei 225 closed 0.2% lower at 39,819.11 as traders stayed on the sidelines ahead of an election for the upper house of parliament on Sunday that could wipe out the ruling coalition’s upper house majority.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index added 1.2% to 24,825.66, while the Shanghai Composite index advanced 0.5% to 3,534.48.

Taiwan’s Taiex climbed 1.2%, helped by a 2.2% gain for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. On Thursday, TSMC reported its net income soared nearly 61% in the last quarter from a year earlier.

Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 rose 1.4% to 8,757.20, and the Kospi in South Korea shed 0.1% to 3,188.07. India’s Sensex lost 0.6%.

“Asia’s riding the global rally wave, AI fever refuses to break, and even the Fed is making soothing noises,” Stephen Innes of SPI Asset Management wrote in a commentary. “But underneath all the sunshine is a market running hot, with volatility on sale and positioning still cautious.”

In energy markets, U.S. benchmark crude oil rose 73 cents to $66.96 per barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, picked up 69 cents to $70.21 per barrel. The U.S. dollar dipped to 148.50 Japanese yen from 148.61 yen. The euro rose to $1.1646 from $1.1596.