MW: U.S. stock futures squeezed ahead of data deluge
Wall Street looks poised for another wobbly day on Thursday, with U.S. stock futures pointing to small losses, with weekly jobless claims one of the stream of economic data ahead.
Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average YMM5, -0.16% slipped 33 points, or 0.2%, to 18,223, while those for the S&P 500 index ESM5, -0.20% dropped 4.75 points, or 0.2%, to 2,117.75. Futures for the Nasdaq 100 index NQM5, -0.32% lost 15.75 points, or 0.4%, to 4,489.75.
The losses come on the back of a choppy session on Wednesday, when cheer over Federal Reserve minutes briefly sent all three indexes into record-high territory, but died down before the market close. Investors read the minutes as confirmation the central bank won’t hike interest rates in June, given concerns about weak economic readings in the first quarter.
Thursday’s data: A stream of data should give clues to whether the economy is faring better in the second quarter. First up are weekly jobless claims and the Chicago Fed national activity index at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time. Economists polled by MarketWatch expect 269,000 Americans to have filed for unemployment benefits last week, up slightly from 264,000 the week before.
At 9:45 a.m. Eastern, the Markit flash manufacturing PMI for May is due. That’s followed by existing home sales for April, the Philadelphia Fed sentiment survey for May and leading indicators for April at 10 a.m. Eastern.
Fed speakers: Fed Vice Chair Stanley Fisher will give a speech on challenges to the euro-area economy at a conference in Portugal at 1:30 p.m. Eastern Time.
San Francisco Fed President John Williams will appear on a panel about central-bank reform at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, at 7 p.m. Eastern. Both Fisher and Williams are voting members of the Federal Open Market Committee this year.
Earnings: Reporting ahead of the bell, electronics retailer Best Buy Co. Inc. BBY, -3.43% is expected to post first-quarter earnings of 29 cents a share, down from 33 cents a share a year earlier, according to a consensus survey by FactSet.
Discount retailer Dollar Tree Inc. DLTR, -1.66% is likely to report first-quarter earnings of 75 cents a share, up from 67 cents a share a year earlier.
After the market closes, Hewlett-Packard Co. HPQ, -0.99% clothing retailer Gap Inc. GPS, +0.13% software company Intuit Inc. INTU, +0.11% and retailer Ross Stores Inc. ROST, -1.99% are all slated to report.
Movers and shakers: Shares of Salesforce.com Inc. CRM, -1.85% jumped 6.5% in premarket action. The cloud-computing company late Wednesday reported adjusted earnings of 16 cents a share compare with the analyst consensus of 14 cents a share.
On a more downbeat note, shares of NetApp Inc. NTAP, -0.06% lost 8.2% ahead of the bell after earnings from the storage and data-management company fell short of Wall Street expectations. The report came out late Wednesday.
Other markets: European stock markets SXXP, -0.18% were mainly lower, with investors digesting a mixed bag of PMI data. Asian markets closed mixed, with weaker-than-expected Chinese manufacturing data keeping a cap on gains in Australia and China.
On the commodities markets, both metal and energy prices moved north. The dollar DXY, -0.53% dropped against most other major currencies.
