Stocks head for lower open with oil near $120 a barrel

[May 06, 2008]  NEW YORK (AP) -- Wall Street headed for a modestly lower open Tuesday as investors awaited more first-quarter earnings reports and watched oil prices hit a new record near $121 a barrel.

With oil and other commodities prices at all-time highs, investors are worried that spending by U.S. consumers and companies may be crimped -- even if other economic factors improve later in the year.

To investors' relief, however, companies outside the financial sector have fared better in the first quarter of the year than many analysts anticipated. Wall Street is hoping that Tuesday's earnings data brings more upbeat news.

Tuesday morning, homebuilder D.R. Horton Inc. and government-sponsored mortgage lender Fannie Mae release brings first-quarter results. Later Tuesday, after the market closes, investors will parse earnings from Walt Disney Co., one of the 30 companies that make up the Dow Jones industrial average, and Cisco Systems Inc., the computer networking equipment maker.

Dow futures fell 10, or 0.08 percent, to 12,957. Standard & Poor's 500 index futures fell 2.30, or 0.16 percent, to 1,406.00, and Nasdaq composite futures fell 3.50, or 0.18 percent, to 1,977.00.

On Monday, the stock market retreated following Microsoft Corp.'s decision late Saturday to withdraw its bid for Yahoo Inc., and as oil prices surged to $120.36 a barrel, a new trading record. In premarket electronic trading Tuesday on the New York Mercantile Exchange, light, sweet crude futures fell 19 cents to $119.79 a barrel after reaching $120.93 a barrel overnight.

Gold prices climbed, and the dollar traded mixed against other major global currencies.

Bond prices were little changed. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note, which moves opposite its price, dipped to 3.86 percent from 3.87 percent late Monday.

Overseas, Japan's stock market was closed. By midday trading in Europe, Britain's FTSE index fell 0.41 percent, Germany's DAX index fell 0.52 percent, and France's CAC-40 fell 0.53 percent.

___

On the Net:

New York Stock Exchange: http://www.nyse.com/

Nasdaq Stock Market: http://www.nasdaq.com/

[Associated Press; By MADLEN READ]

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.