US pre-open: Wall Street's Thursday gains set to be undone

US stock futures dipped on Friday, reversing Wall Street’s first gains for the week on Thursday.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is expected to open down approximately 0.8%, while the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq are both set to begin the session down 0.7%.

There’s plenty of data due out in the economic calendar, with retail sales data due at 1330 GMT and the University of Michigan Confidence survey at 1500 GMT as well as the business inventories.

Asia stocks decline as FOMC interest rate decision looms

Elsewhere, Asian stocks outside of Japan declined as oil prices dragged and investors exercised caution ahead of the Federal Reserve’s interest rate decision next week.

“We expect a little pop back above $40 on bargain hunting today, but there’s currently no end in sight for the wider downtrends in Brent and WTI,” said Michael Van Dulken and Augustin Eden at Accendo Markets.

Van Dulken added that equities were in the red on what is likely to be a “risk-off Friday” before China retail sales and industrial product ion data on Sunday, and the Fed rate decision on 16 December.

The Fed is widely expected to raise interest rates for the first time in nearly a decade.

In Friday’s economic data, Chinese banks issued 708.9bn yuan ($110.10bn) of new yuan loans in November compared with 513.6 trn yuan in October, the People’s Bank of China revealed.

The figure surpassed analysts’ expectations of 600bn yuan.

European stocks were dragged down by energy shares as oil prices fell, with West Texas Intermediate dipping 1.44% to $36.23 a barrel while Brent crude dropped 1.64% to $39.08 a barrel.

The dollar was on the back foot against the main currencies, falling 0.19% and 0.26% against the yen and the euro respectively and flat against the pound, while spot gold dropped 0.59% to $1,065.25.

In company news, Dow Chemical and DuPont have agreed to a merger that will create a combined company with a market capitalisation of around $130bn.

The companies said the transaction is expected to deliver around $3bn in cost synergies, with 10% of the run-rate cost synergies achieved within the first 24 months after the transaction closes.

Adobe Systems is expected to open higher after the software company posted better than expected quarterly results late on Thursday.

GoPro's 11.5% gains on Thursday are expected to be scaled back, after speculation the camera company could be targeted by Apple for acquisition. The shares were down 2.5% in after-hours trading.