U.S. stock futures rose on Thursday, gaining traction as bond yields eased along with oil prices, with an OPEC+ meeting ahead. Investors will also get updates on weekly jobless claims and productivity later.
How are stock futures trading?
- S&P 500 futures ES00 rose 0.5% to 4,118
- Dow Jones Industrial Average futures YM00 rose 0.4%, or 138 points, to 32,936
- Nasdaq-100 futures NQ00 rose 0.6% to 12,623
On Wednesday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average YM00 fell 176.89 points, or 0.5%, to 32,813.23, while the S&P 500 index SPX finished down 0.7% to 4,101.23. The Nasdaq Composite COMP fell 0.7% to 11,994.45.
What’s driving the markets?
Investors will get a fresh batch of economic data on Thursday: the ADP employment report, weekly jobless claims and a revision to first-quarter productivity and unit labor costs are all ahead of the market open. Factory orders and a revision to core capital goods are due at 10 a.m.
Jobs-related data comes a day ahead of May nonfarm payrolls numbers.
“Today’s ADP report is important, but unless we have a decent surprise, it’s mostly unlikely to give a fresh direction to the market. The U.S. economy is expected to have added 300’000 new private jobs, which is a strong number if we go back to the prepandemic times,” said Ipek Ozkardeskaya, senior analyst at Swissquote Bank, in a note to clients.
“A lower-than-expected figure will hardly revive the Fed doves, while a positive read could boost the Fed hawks — and further dampen the market mood,” she said.
Investors will hear from Cleveland Federal Reserve President Loretta Mester at 1 p.m. Eastern.
Growing expectations the Fed will follow up widely expected half percentage point rate increases in June and July with another in September have been weighing on stocks and bonds and sending Treasury yields higher.
But some respite was emerging on Thursday, with Wall Street pointing to a positive session as the yield on the 10-year note BX:TMUBMUSD10Y slipped 2 basis points to 2.916%, while that of the 2-year BX:TMUBMUSD02Y rose just one basis point to 2.662%.
And oil prices were also stepping back ahead of an OPEC+ meeting, with U.S. crude CL and Brent prices BRN00 down over 2% each after the Financial Times reported that Saudi Arabia was ready to pump more oil if Russian output drops dramatically due to sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine.
Read: Will OPEC+ fill the gap as Russian oil output falls? Don’t count on it.
What companies are in focus?
- Chewy Inc. CHWY rallied 17% in premarket trading after the online pet-products retailer reported a surprise profit in its fiscal first quarter.
- Hewlett Packard Enterprises Co. HPE fell 6% after earnings and sales missed Wall Street forecasts.
- C3.ai Inc. AI stock plunged 22% after the software group forecast slimmer revenue in the coming year than expected by Wall Street.
- Video game retailer and meme stock GameStop Corp. GME, reported a narrower-than-forecast loss, while inventories surged. Shares were flat in premarket trading.
How are other assets trading?
- The ICE U.S. Dollar Index DXY, a measure of the currency against a basket of six major rivals, fell 0.2%.
- Bitcoin BTCUSD was trading 5.3% lower, below $30,000.
- In European equities, the Stoxx Europe 600 XX:SXXP rose 0.5%. London stocks were not trading in observance of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee extended holiday weekend.
- In Asia, the Shanghai Composite CN:SHCOMP closed up 0.4%, the Hang Seng Index HK:HSI fell 0.9% in Hong Kong, and Japan’s Nikkei 225 JP:NIK slipped 0.1%.