U.S. stock futures on Thursday pointed to a stronger start, with traders looking past Hewlett-Packard's downbeat guidance after the lumps that the market has taken earlier in the week.
S&P 500 futures rose 8.6 points to 788.10 and Nasdaq 100 futures added 8.5 points to 1,188.50. Dow industrial futures added 73 points.
Other asset classes showed signs of greater risk taking. The euro recovered some of this week's losses on fears over Eastern Europe contagion, and oil futures rose $1.48 to $36.10 a barrel. Gold futures fell about $4 an ounce.
U.S. stocks closed basically flat on Wednesday, following the rout on Tuesday, as strength for defensive stocks helped compensate for losses from financials as a foreclosure mitigation plan by the Obama administration was announced. The Dow industrials rose 3 points, the S&P 500 fell to its lowest finish since Nov. 12 with a fractional point decline, and the Nasdaq Composite slipped 2 points.
"The homeowner bailout announced (Wednesday), adding flesh to the bare bonds of the financial sector package outline from last week, is big enough to make a material difference to the foreclosure rate," said Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics.
"That in turn would bring about a floor in home prices sooner than would otherwise have been the case. But you should be under no illusions about the ability of the plan to lift home prices: it can't, because the inventory overhang is so huge."
The economic docket for Thursday will include manufacturing data from the Philadelphia area, with markets on edge to see if that reading is as weak as a similar reading from the New York area earlier this week.
Weekly jobless claims, producer price data from January and leading indicators data also will be released.
Thursday's earnings docket includes releases from Sprint Nextel Sprint Nextel Corporation
