US stock futures fell on Thursday morning as investors awaited several economic reports scheduled for release in the morning.
Futures linked to the Dow Jones Industrial Average were down 41 points, or 0.1%. S&P 500 futures fell 0.3% and Nasdaq 100 futures fell 0.5%.
Retail sales, import prices and jobless claims, as well as the Philadelphia Fed manufacturing survey and the Empire State manufacturing survey are scheduled for release at 8: 30 am ET. These reports will come after Wednesday’s producer price index report showed a 0.1% decline in wholesale prices in August.
Wall Street is coming off a choppy session in which the major averages posted modest gains. The Dow on Wednesday closed slightly higher, up 30 points, after falling more than 200 points at one point. The S&P 500 rose 0.3% and the Nasdaq Composite rose 0.7%.
Stocks looked for stability after a hotter-than-expected inflation report on Tuesday sent them tumbling to record their worst day since 2020. The August consumer price index report showed that general inflation increased by 0.1% monthly, despite the drop in gas prices.
“One-day events are difficult to extrapolate,” Jeff deGraaf, founder and president of Renaissance Macro Research, told CNBC’s “Closing Bell: Overtime.” “It’s one of those extreme events that has no follow-up and tends to be good news, not bad.”
“Inflation is really a dark cloud over stocks, but I think it’s really important for people to keep in mind that it’s not about good and bad in the markets, it’s about better and worse,” he added, “and it seems that the inflation is improving.”