By Sagarika Jaisinghani
(Reuters) – U.S. stock index futures were subdued on Thursday as investors braced for another staggering weekly jobless claims figure, the latest evidence of a slowing economic recovery from a pandemic-led recession.
The Labor Department’s report, due at 8:30 a.m. ET, is likely to show 840,000 Americans filed for unemployment benefits in the week ended Sept. 19. Although down slightly from 860,000 in the previous week, it would still signal a cooling in the labor market’s rebound.
Wall Street’s main indexes have stumbled this month, with the S&P 500 hovering just above correction territory on waning hopes of more fiscal stimulus, signs of choppy economic growth and a sell-off in heavyweight technology-related names.
The Nasdaq entered correction territory earlier this month, but the blue-chip Dow has outperformed its peers on demand for value-linked stocks such as industrials.
At 6:55 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis were up 47 points, or 0.18%, S&P 500 e-minis were up 4.25 points, or 0.13%, and Nasdaq 100 e-minis were down 11.75 points, or 0.11%
Apple Inc, Amazon.com Inc, Netflix Inc and Google-parent Alphabet Inc, which have led a Wall Street rally since April, edged lower in premarket trading.
A 4% slide put Tesla Inc on course for its third straight day of declines following an underwhelming “Battery Day” presentation by Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk.
Big banks including Goldman Sachs Group Inc, Wells Fargo & Co and JPMorgan Chase & Co gained between 0.8% and 1.6%.
U.S.-listed shares of Tencent Music Entertainment Group rose 1.5% as Jefferies forecast encouraging revenue growth in the third quarter and solid momentum in subscription for the China-based music streaming company.
Nikola Corp, which is set for one of its biggest weekly declines ever, tumbled another 7.8% as Wedbush downgraded the stock to “underperform”.
(Reporting by Sagarika Jaisinghani and Devik Jain in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur)
