Oil helps Wall Street futures inch higher

[November 22, 2017]   By Sruthi Shankar

(Reuters) - A jump in U.S. crude prices prodded Wall Street futures higher on Wednesday, with traders' eyes on a slide in Hewlett Packard shares after its chief executive said she would leave, as well as minutes from the Federal Reserve's latest policy meeting.

* The S&P 500 <.SPX> closed higher on Tuesday for the first time in nearly two weeks, helped by gains in technology stocks. The CBOE Volatility index <.VIX>, Wall Street's fear gauge, fell to its lowest in more than two weeks.

* Fed Chair Janet Yellen on Tuesday stuck by her prediction that inflation would soon rebound, but offered an unusually strong caveat: she is "very uncertain" about this and is open to the possibility that prices could remain low for years.

* The Fed's Open Market Committee releases minutes of its October policy meeting at 2:00 p.m. ET (1800 GMT).

* Oil prices spiked on Wednesday with U.S. light crude jumping nearly 2 percent to highs not seen since July 2015 after faults on a major pipeline dented Canadian deliveries across the border, where inventories were also said to be falling.

* Hewlett Packard Enterprise <HPE.N> slipped more than 5 percent in premarket trading after Meg Whitman, the company's CEO for the past six years, said she would leave the post in February.

* HP Inc <HPQ.N>, comprising the computer and printer business that Whitman carved out of the old Hewlett Packard, was down 5.6 percent after reporting an unimpressive profit.

* Deere <DE.N> rose more than 4 percent after the tractor maker reported upbeat quarterly earnings and issued a strong profit forecast for the year.

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S. November 17, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

* Salesforce <CRM.N> fell 3 percent after the cloud-based software maker forecast profit slightly below estimates.

* Commerce Department data on Wednesday is expected to show that new orders for durable goods rose 0.3 percent after rising 2.0 percent in September.

* The Labor Department will also release initial jobless claims numbers for the week ended Nov. 18, which is predicted to come in at 240,000, compared with 249,000 in the previous week.

* Both reports are expected at 8:30 a.m. ET.

Futures snapshot at 6:55 a.m. ET:

* Dow e-minis <1YMc1> were up 27 points, or 0.11 percent, with 17,593 contracts changing hands.

* S&P 500 e-minis <ESc1> were up 0.5 points, or 0.02 percent, with 100,170 contracts traded.

* Nasdaq 100 e-minis <NQc1> were up 2.25 points, or 0.04 percent, on volume of 19,803 contracts.

(Reporting by Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D'Souza)

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