US pre-open: Futures mixed ahead of first day of June trading

Wall Street futures were pointing to a mixed open ahead of the opening bell on the first day of June trading.

As of 1150 BST, Dow Jones futures were up 0.32%, while S&P 500 futures were 0.07% stronger and Nasdaq-100 futures had the index opening 0.14% weaker.

The Dow closed 222.84 points lower on Tuesday as the major indices failed to carry over last week's momentum upon its return from the Memorial Day long weekend.

AvaTrade's Naeem Aslam said: "Today is also the first day of June which means today is the first day that we will see the Fed in the US to begin the process of reducing the size of its balance sheet. It is highly possible that most of traders may sit on the side line today as they would like see the reaction of this activity and how market players react to this monetary policy decision.

"One choppy quarter has ended and another one is here. The reason for this is the Fed’s monetary policy and its influence on the US economy. The Fed is expected to remain on the autopilot in this quarter and is expected to increase the interest rate by 50 basis points only. Market players are getting used of the Fed removing the liquidity out of the system and they are watching the influence of this on quarterly earnings. The current quarterly earning period is almost coming to end, and the message that we have heard from companies is that they are preparing themselves for higher cost, and for an environment where consumers may not want to dig deep into their pockets."

On the macro front, weekly mortgage application data from the Mortgage Bankers Association will be published at 1200 BST, while S&P Global and the Institute for Supply Management's May manufacturing PMIs will follow at 1445 BST and 1500 BST, respectively. April construction spending data and JOLTs jobs report will also be released at 1500 BST.

In the corporate space, GameStop and Hewlett Packard will both report earnings after the close.

Reporting by Iain Gilbert at Sharecast.com