US stock futures little changed ahead of open

[August 05, 2009]  NEW YORK (AP) -- U.S. stock futures are little changed Wednesday as investors hesitate to make big bets ahead of Friday's looming jobs report.

Overseas markets have been mixed. European indexes posted modest gains after earlier losses in Asia. Bailed-out British bank Lloyds Banking Group PLC said most of its bad loans have been accounted for even as it reported a staggering $5.3 billion loss for the first half of the year.

Prices for commodities like oil and gold held steady, while the U.S. dollar was narrowly mixed against other major currencies.

The caution in the market follows muted gains on Tuesday, when investors put the brakes on a huge advance that sent stocks up 14 percent in just 16 days. The benchmark Standard & Poor's 500 index, which moved above the 1,000 level for the first time since November on Monday, is up 48.6 percent off of 12-year lows hit in early March.

Though the earnings and economic news continues to be fairly upbeat, investors are wary of taking the market too high too quickly and analysts have been expecting stocks to drift after such a big move.

Buying has eased as investors await the government's monthly employment report on Friday, arguably the month's most important piece of economic data. While investors anticipate the unemployment rate to creep as high as 10 percent this year, there is concern that the labor market is not stabilizing.

In the meantime, investors will be looking to reports on factory orders and activity in the services sector on Wednesday for more clues on the state of the economy. An earnings report from Cisco Systems Inc., to be issued after the market closes, will also be closely watched. Traders consider the world's largest maker of computer networking gear a gauge of the health of the technology sector.

Ahead of the market's open, Dow Jones industrial average futures are up 2, or 0.02 percent, to 9,289. Standard & Poor's 500 index futures are up less than a point to 1,005.40, while Nasdaq 100 index futures are down 2, or 0.1 percent, to 1,628.25.

In late morning trading, Britain's FTSE 100 added 0.3 percent, Germany's DAX index was up 0.1 percent, and France's CAC-40 rose 0.6 percent.

Earlier Wednesday, Japan's Nikkei stock average closed down 1.2 percent and Hong Kong's Hang Seng index fell 1.5 percent.

Bond prices fell in early trading. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note, which moves opposite its price, rose to 3.72 percent from 3.69 percent late Tuesday.

The dollar was mixed against other major currencies, while gold prices fell slightly.

Light, sweet crude fell 22 cents to $71.20 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

[Associated Press; By SARA LEPRO]

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.