Oil
firms including Exxon Mobil and Chevron Corp slipped about 0.9%
premarket, while big banks Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase & Co,
Citigroup, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs Group dropped 1%
each.
Industrials Caterpillar Inc, Deere & Co and Nucor Corp also came
under pressure after Democratic leaders of the U.S. House of
Representatives delayed a planned vote on a $1 trillion
bipartisan infrastructure bill on Thursday.
These stocks would benefit the most from government spending on
infrastructure.
Wall Street ended sharply lower on Thursday and the S&P 500
posted its worst month since the onset of the global health
crisis, following a tumultuous month and quarter wrecked by
concerns over COVID-19, inflation fears and budget wrangling in
Washington.
All eyes are now on consumer spending, inflation and factory
activity data later in the day for signs of economic health and
clues regarding the Federal Reserve's timeline for tapering its
asset purchases and hiking key interest rates.
President Joe Biden signed a measure to continue funding the
government through Dec. 3, although congressional Democrats and
Republicans continued brawling over raising the debt ceiling
beyond $28.4 trillion to avert a U.S. credit default.
At 6:21 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis were down 163 points, or 0.48%, S&P
500 e-minis were down 17.25 points, or 0.4%, and Nasdaq 100
e-minis were down 48.75 points, or 0.33%.
The S&P 500 on Thursday closed below its 100-day moving average
(DMA), a closely watched technical indicator, for the first time
since November 2020. All the three major Wall Street indexes are
trading below their 100-DMAs.
Mega-cap tech stocks and slipped before the opening bell.
The NYSE FANG+TM index, which houses some of these stocks,
slipped 3.7% over the July to September period, breaking its
five-quarter winning streak.
Merck & Co Inc jumped 4.7% after the drugmaker's experimental
oral drug for COVID-19, molnupiravir, reduced by around 50% the
chance of hospitalization or death for patients at risk of
severe disease in a study.
(Reporting by Devik Jain and Medha Singh in Bengaluru; Editing
by Maju Samuel)
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