LDN - Business

Futures lower as Apple, chipmakers weigh

[December 26, 2017] By Sruthi Shankar

(Reuters) - U.S. stock futures were slightly lower on Tuesday in light trading volumes after Christmas holiday as losses in Apple and a bunch of chipmakers weighed.

Apple's <AAPL.O> shares fell more than $4 to $170.88 in premarket trading after Taiwan's Economic Daily reported that demand for iPhone X could come in below expectations in the first quarter.

Shares of iPhone maker's suppliers - Broadcom <AVGO.O>, Skyworks Solutions <SWKS.O> and Qorvo <QRVO.O> - fell between 1 percent and 2 percent.

Chipmakers Micron <MU.O> and Advanced Micro Devices <AMD.O> were also down about 1.5 percent each.

Sucampo Pharma <SCMP.O> jumped about 5 percent after Mallinckrodt <MNK.N> said it would acquire the drugmaker for $1.2 billion, to gain access to its constipation drug Amitiza.

At 6:51 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis were down 35 points, or 0.14 percent, with 6,437 contracts changing hands.

S&P 500 e-minis were down 0.5 points, or 0.02 percent, with 17,734 contracts traded.

Nasdaq 100 e-minis were down 15.75 points, or 0.24 percent, on volume of 7,000 contracts.

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Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, (NYSE) in New York, U.S., December 1, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

The indexes ended with weekly gains on Friday after a long-promised Republican bill to cut corporate tax rates was ratified and a short-term spending bill that averted a government shutdown was approved.

Bitcoin traded up 7.7 percent at $14,954, recovering from last week's selloff which saw the cryptocurrency fall below $12,000.

Shares of Riot Blockchain, Longfin Corp and Overstock.com rose between 3 percent and 12 percent.

A report due at 10:00 a.m. ET is likely to show consumer confidence index fell to 128.1 in December from 129.5 in the previous month.

(Reporting by Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva)

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