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The
Labor Department's report at 8:30 a.m. ET is expected to show
that the number of Americans filing new applications for
unemployment benefits decreased to 765,000 last week as a drop
in COVID-19 cases allowed more businesses to reopen.
Wall Street's main indexes hit record highs at the beginning of
the week but gradually retreated following a rise in treasury
bond yields, which led to fears of higher inflation.
These concerns have spurred profit-taking from companies with
high valuations in the S&P 500 technology and communications
services sectors, that have led the benchmark index gain 76%
from its March 2020 lows.
Apple Inc, Microsoft Corp, Amazon.com Inc, Alphabet Inc and
Facebook Inc, which together account for about 22% of the weight
of the S&P 500, were down between 0.7% and 2.2%.
"A steady slow increase may not necessarily disrupt the uptrend
in equities but will likely force rotation from highly priced
stocks, typically in the tech sector, to more reasonably priced
cyclical ones, " said Hussein Sayed, chief market strategist at
FXTM.
Shares of Walmart Inc and Marriott International fell about 2%
after the companies reported quarterly results.
Fourth-quarter earnings season have been largely upbeat, while
investors eyed progress in countrywide vaccination efforts and
hopes of $1.9 trillion dollar stimulus package.
At 6:50 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis were down 77 points, or 0.24%, S&P
500 e-minis were down 16.25 points, or 0.41%, and Nasdaq 100
e-minis were down 106.75 points, or 0.78%.
(Reporting by Devik Jain and Shreyashi Sanyal in Bengaluru;
Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)
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