Futures dip ahead of weekly jobless claims number

[April 09, 2020]    By Uday Sampath Kumar
 
 (Reuters) - U.S. stock index futures dipped on Thursday as investors braced for another staggering weekly jobless claims number, while oil prices rose on hopes of sweeping production cuts.

A man crosses a nearly deserted Nassau Street in front of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in the financial district of lower Manhattan during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in New York City, New York, U.S., April 3, 2020. REUTERS/Mike Segar

The number of initial jobless claims are expected to have surged to 15 million in the past three weeks, even with figures for the week ended April 4 likely slipping to a seasonally adjusted 5.25 million, according to a Reuters poll of economists.

Estimates in the survey were as high as 9.295 million, and the final report from the Labor Department is expected at 8:30 a.m. ET.

Wall Street jumped on Wednesday on early signs the coronavirus outbreak in U.S. hot spots was close to peaking, with the Dow Jones <.DJI> and S&P 500 <.SPX> ending more than 3.4% higher.

Meanwhile, Exxon Mobil <XOM.N>, Chevron <CVX.N>, Marathon Oil <MRO.N> and Apache Corp <APA.N> rose between 1.5% and 16% in premarket trade ahead of a meeting of the world's biggest oil producers to discuss production cuts.

At 06:02 a.m. EDT, Dow e-minis <1YMcv1> were down 8 points, or 0.03%, S&P 500 e-minis <EScv1> were down 5.5 points, or 0.2% and Nasdaq 100 e-minis <NQcv1> were down 24.5 points, or 0.3%.

SPDR S&P 500 ETFs <SPY.P> were down 0.28%.

(Reporting by Uday Sampath in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur)

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