Caution from metals giant Alcoa and a report showing that nearly 700,000 jobs were lost last month helped drag U.S. stock futures lower on Wednesday as an up-and-down week continued. Losses for the stock indexes deepened after the employment report. S&P 500 futures dropped 11.8 points to 918.70 and Nasdaq 100 futures lost 13.75 points to 1,257.20. Dow industrial futures slipped 104 points. ADP said 693,000 jobs were lost in December, more than the 515,000 private-sector jobs that economists expected the ADP report to show. The report comes two days ahead of official data on nonfarm payrolls and also comes after the ADP incorporated changes designed to improve the correlation between its report and the government's. The euro recovered some of Tuesday's losses, with the shared currency hovering around $1.36. Yields on 10-year Treasury bonds fell to 2.47%. Three-month dollar LIBOR fell to 1.4% from 1.41% -- the lowest level since June 2004 and a far cry from 4.82% in early October. Oil futures, meanwhile, cooled a bit after a strong run, with light sweet crude trading around $48 a barrel. Weekly energy inventories data is due at 10:30 a.m. Eastern. The recent recovery in oil is more to do with the Russia-Ukraine dispute and OPEC members tightening production than the Israel-Gaza conflict, said Jan Stuart, an analyst at UBS. "Generally, oil demand rises from January to February, and cold is adding to gas oil demand. Also utilities are burning more fuel oil -- indeed, several eastern European utilities were told to burn oil instead of natural gas because Russia cut its gas exports transiting the Ukraine," he said. Gas supplies to Europe from Russia, through Ukraine, were completely halted Wednesday. On the corporate front, Alcoa dropped 6% in preopen trade after it announced plans to cut 13,500 jobs, close plants and curb aluminum output. "The net impact of these actions is expected to be slightly positive on our 2009 earnings estimates," said analysts from FBR. "However, we continue to maintain our cautious outlook on the name due to further downside risk to fourth-quarter earnings estimates from the downstream results, expectations of weak first-quarter guidance due to weak end-user demand, full valuation, and risk of the dividend being cut." Bank of America shares slipped 1% as the bank raised $2.8 billion from selling shares in China Construction Bank. Family Dollar Stores rose 10% in pre-open trade as the retailer reported a 14% profit rise and lifted its earnings outlook for the year. Monsanto also rose as the agrichemicals firm upped its annual earnings view after more than doubling its quarterly profit. Satyam Computer Sciences tumbled 84% in preopen trade after India's fourth-largest software firm announced it had inflated cash and bank balances by more than $1 billion, leading the group's founder and chairman to quit. In late trade, India's Sensex dropped more than 7%. "It's a major blow to sentiment," said Gurunath Mudlapur, managing director at Atherstone Capital Market in Mumbai. "Market sentiment had just about started to improve after a long period of time, but with this development, the confidence is again getting shattered." Other Asia markets were mixed, with the Hang Seng dropping 3.4% in Hong Kong, while the Nikkei 225 added 1.7% in Tokyo. In Europe, a combination of profit taking and fund-raising plans hurt stocks, with the FTSE 100 losing 1.8% in London and the pan-European Stoxx 600 faltering 0.5%. Utilities and oil producers weighed on the market. U.S. stocks closed higher Tuesday as President-elect Obama stumped for his recovery plan on Capitol Hill, even as minutes from the December Open Market Committee meeting offered a bleak view of the economy. The Dow industrials rose 62 points, the Nasdaq Composite rose 24 points and the S&P 500 added 7 points.

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