US pre-open: Futures point to losses ahead of jobless data

(Sharecast News) - Wall Street futures were pointing to losses ahead of the bell on Thursday following yesterday's strong session.
As of 1230 BST, Dow futures were down 0.13%, while S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 futures had the indices opening 0.42% and 0.98% lower, respectively.

The Dow Jones closed 454.84 points higher on Wednesday and closed above 29,000 for the first time in over six months, while both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq closed at record levels.

As far as Thursday was concerned, the day's main focus will be the weekly jobless claims report from the Department of Labor at 1330 BST.

First-time applications are expected to have decelerated to 950,000 in the week ended 29 August, mark a reduction from the prior week's number, which topped 1.0m first-time applicants.

Oanda's Craig Erlam said: "The European surge isn't rubbing off on Wall Street yet, with US futures pointing to a flat open after two strong days for stock markets on that side of the pond.

"The broad-based nature of the latest rally is encouraging and suggests there's more to it than just pandemic-proof tech firms asserting their dominance over US indices. The more broad-based this becomes, the more it signals a turning of the tide as far as the economic outlook is concerned, at least among those on Wall Street."

Elsewhere on the macro front, trade balance figures for July will be published at 1330 BST, while the ISM non-manufacturing PMI for August will be released at 1500 BST.

Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago head Charles Evans will deliver a speech at 1800 BST.

In corporate news, Facebook was in focus after announcing it would ban political advertisements in the week leading up to November's US election, while Campbell Soup and Michael Cos both posted earnings before the bell that came in ahead of expectations.