Stock futures trading slightly lower
NEW YORK — Stock futures were trading slightly lower Friday morning, pointing to a modest decline at the market opening as investors weigh recent signs of economic recovery and potential concern about inflation.
Investors get a new reading on consumer sentiment Friday morning. Growing consumer confidence is important to a recovery because their spending accounts for more than two-thirds of economic activity.
Overseas stock trading offered mixed signals, as European stocks were modestly lower in afternoon trading while Asian markets finished higher.
Ahead of the U.S. market opening, Dow Jones industrial average futures fell 11, or 0.13 percent, to 8,740. Standard & Poor’s 500 index futures fell 3.50, or 0.37 percent, to 934.70, while Nasdaq 100 index futures fell 1.75, or 0.12 percent, to 1,489.25.
On Thursday, investors welcomed a better-than-expected report on jobless claims and data showing growth in retail sales. Strong results from a 30-year Treasury bond auction also supported the market, after weak Treasury sales earlier in the week stoked fears of rising interest rates and inflation.
Stocks closed modestly higher Thursday, an indication the market’s three-month rally is slowing. The S&P has gained 39.7 percent and the Dow has jumped 34 percent since the market bottomed in early March.
Joe Clark, managing partner of Financial Enhancement Group, said the market is like a sponge. During the recent run-up in prices, investors absorbed all the good news they could take in to push stocks higher. Eventually the sponge becomes saturated and can’t absorb any more information, he said.
“The sponge seems to be full,” Clark said. He added that the same situation occurred with the absorption of bad news earlier in the year leading to the market bottoming in early March.
The stock market had shown little movement earlier in the week as investors became concerned that rising interest rates and weakening demand for government debt could derail a potential recovery in the economy. If Washington has to raise rates to attract buyers, that could hurt the economy by boosting borrowing costs for consumers.
But Thursday’s bond auction results helped eased some of those concerns as demand for the debt appeared strong.
On Friday, bond prices were mostly higher. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note, which moves opposite its price, fell to 3.83 percent from 3.86 percent late Thursday. The yield on the three-month T-bill was flat at 0.17 percent.
The dollar rose against other major currencies, while gold prices fell.
Overseas, Japan’s Nikkei stock average rose 1.6 percent. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng gained 0.5 percent. Asian markets were buoyed by reports that retail sales and industrial output grew strongly in China in May.
In afternoon trading, Britain’s FTSE 100 fell 0.4 percent, Germany’s DAX index declined 0.6 percent, and France’s CAC-40 fell 0.3 percent.
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