Stock futures point to dip on Wall St. after two days of gains

[February 13, 2018]   By Sruthi Shankar

(Reuters) - U.S. stock futures pointed to another dip at the open for Wall Street on Tuesday, halting two days of gains that had somewhat cooled investor nerves about a burgeoning market correction.

By 6:53 a.m. ET (1153 GMT), Dow e-minis <1YMc1> were down 183 points, S&P 500 e-minis <ESc1> were down 17.25 points and the Nasdaq 100 e-minis <NQc1> were down 46.75 points.

The major indexes gained roughly 3 percent over Monday and Friday, their best two-day period since June 2016, after declining in four of the previous five trading sessions to finish last week with its worst performance in two years.

Those falls wiped out all of the year's gains for the benchmark S&P 500 <.SPX> and the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average <.DJI>, which are now down 0.5 percent and 0.7 percent, respectively, so far in 2018.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq <.IXIC> was still clinging to a 1.4 percent gain for the year as of end of trade Monday.

Helping stocks on Monday was the announcement of President Donald Trump's budget, which included an infrastructure spending plan that boosted sectors such as materials and industrials.

A widely-followed measure of short-term stock market volatility, the CBOE Volatility Index <.VIX>, opened at 26.94 points, after two days of relative calm. The index had jumped above 50 points during last week's sell-off.

Crucial to the rest of this week will be Wednesday's inflation numbers. The fall in stocks was sparked initially by rises in bond yields, and associated concern over price growth, as U.S. interest rates return steadily to pre-financial crisis levels.

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, (NYSE) in New York, U.S., February 9, 2018. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

U.S. 10-year Treasury yields <US10YT=RR> were hovering at 2.8312 percent, falling back from a four-year peak of 2.9020 percent hit on Monday. [US/]

Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester, a voting member in the U.S. central bank's rate-setting committee this year, is due to speak on the economic outlook and monetary policy later on Tuesday.

More than three-fifths of the companies on the S&P 500 have reported earnings, with nearly 78 percent of them topping profit expectations, according to Thomson Reuters data. That is above the 72 percent average beat-rate in the past four quarters.

Shares of Under Armour <UA.N> <UAA.N> rose more than 10 percent in premarket trading after the sportswear maker reported quarterly revenue that beat analysts' estimates.

Drug distributor AmerisourceBergen <ABC.N> jumped nearly 13 percent after the Wall Street Journal reported Walgreens <WBA.O> approached the company for a takeover. Walgreens fell 1.8 percent.

(Reporting by Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru)

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