(menafn – ecpulse)
Wall Street and particularly the benchmark Standard & Poor's 500 Index will probably decline for a third consecutive day with a report that may show filing for employment benefits in the U.S. ticked up in the past week.
Trimming earlier gains, U.S. stocks-index futures slipped in pre-market trading Thursday. As of 06:22 a.m. in New York, Dow Jones Industrial Average futures lost 0.47 percent at 12,949, while Standard & Poor's 500 Index futures slipped 0.48 percent at 1,386.50.
American equities are heavily weighed so far this week, after the Federal Reserve held off increasing monetary easing unless the U.S. economic growth slows down or prices climb at a rate slower than the Fed's 2 percent target.
The March 13 meeting minutes released two days ago was no good news for profit seekers, where we saw a sell-off wave horning in the global markets. Yesterday, the S&P 500 Index had its second-worst drop of the year, while the dollar remained the winning horse.
Commodities slid as well as the 17-nation common currency, after weaker demand at a Spanish debt auction fueled back concerns about the nation's sovereign-debt crisis. Spanish, Italian and Portuguese bond yields went up.
U.S. Initial jobless claims in the week ended March 31 fell by 5 thousand to 355K, a labor Department repot may show at 08:30 a.m. in Washington today. Last week's report was pinched by annual revision, but today's report offers somehow clearer figures.
Ahead of the Labor Department's March employment situation that will be out tomorrow, Investors are closely anticipating today's labor data. Unemployment rate in the U.S. probably stood at 8.3 percent in March, hopefully with another 200K plus NFP employment figure.
The labor market is showing more signs of improvement but jobless rates in the U.S. are "still elevated", policy makers said in March. Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said he's encouraged by falling unemployment but underscored the need for more accommodative policy to maintain this improvement.
