US pre-open: Stocks seen muted ahead of retail sales, earnings

US stock futures pointed to a muted open on Wall Street on Tuesday as investors eyed the latest retail sales data and more key bank earnings.

At 1130 BST, Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 futures were flat, while Nasdaq futures were down 0.1%.

Joshua Mahony, chief market analyst at Scope Markets, said: "With limited corporate and economic news flow on Monday along with that weaker-than-expected Chinese GDP print, the fact Wall Street managed to advance modestly yesterday is worthy of note.

"Futures suggest that momentum may be lacking ahead of Tuesday’s open, although with a slew of announcements expected, price action is unlikely to be short lived for long. US retail sales prints for June will be closely followed as there’s a risk we could see this move into a contraction phase, something that would have the potential to rattle sentiment.

"And whilst warnings season also continues, it’s Bank of America and Morgan Stanley that dominate the agenda today. However. given the solid performance seen by peers last week, there’s unlikely to be much cause for concern here. Critically it will be those consumer discretionary plays including Tesla and Netflix who are both slated to report on Wednesday that will arguably have the potential to inject some real volatility into the market, especially if the propensity to spend is suffering."

Ahead of the open, he called the Dow up 18 points at 34,603 and the S&P down one at 4,522.

The US retail sales figures for June are due out at 1330 BST.

On the corporate front, earnings are also due from Bank of New York Mellon and PNC Financial.