US pre-open: Futures lower ahead of final October trading session

Wall Street futures were in the red ahead of the opening bell on the final day of October.

As of 1315 GMT, Dow Jones futures were down 0.52%, while S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 futures had the indices opening 0.57% and 0.71% lower, respectively.

The Dow closed 828.52 points higher on Friday, putting the blue-chip index firmly on course for its best month in over 40 years despite a mixed third-quarter earnings season.

Earnings will continue to be in focus over the next five days, with Uber, Pfizer, and AMD all set to report throughout the course of the week.

In terms of Monday's earnings, Loews will publish their latest set of quarterly figures before the open, while Goodyear Tire & Rubber will update on trading after the close.

On the macro front, October's Chicago purchasing managers' index will be published at 1445 GMT and the Dallas Fed's October manufacturing index will follow at 1530 GMT.

Market participants will hold out for the latest Federal Reserve meeting, set to kick off on Tuesday, with the central bank widely expected to hike rates by three-quarters of a percentage yet again. Traders will also look for any signs that the Fed may halt its interest rate rises in the near future.

AvaTrade's Naeem Aslam said: "This week's biggest and most important event is the Fed meeting, in which the Fed will announce its monetary policy decision. So far, it is pretty much clear to investors and traders that the Fed will increase the interest rate by 75 basis points, and not many in the market do not agree with this stance of the Fed as it is absolutely necessary, especially if the Fed wants to arrest inflation rapidly. This means that the interest rate in the US will jump to nearly 4%.

"Now the big question regarding this week's most important event is not if the Fed will increase the interest rate by 75 basis points. Still, it is about the future path of the interest rate and the trajectory of the interest rate presented by the Fed. The reality is that chances are thin that we will see another interest rate hike of the same magnitude from the Fed, at least this year. This means that the next interest rate hike by the Fed will most likely be 50 basis points, which traders will try to gauge from the Fed meeting."

Reporting by Iain Gilbert at Sharecast.com