US pre-open: Futures point to early losses on first day of Q3 trading
Wall Street futures were in the red ahead of the bell on Friday as the second half of 2022 looked set to start off much the same as the first one ended.
As of 1220 BST, Dow Jones futures were down 0.34%, while S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 futures had the indices opening 0.36% and 0.46% lower, respectively.
The Dow closed 235.88 points lower on Thursday, while the S&P 500 delivered its worst first first-half performance in more than half a century.
Swissquote's Ipek Ozkardeskaya said: "The S&P500 which saw its last record high on 4 of January, took a dive, and closed the first half in the bear market, having lost more than 20% since the beginning of the year, while Nasdaq, which is more sensitive to the Fed policy and to the rising interest rates, closed the first half more than 30% down.
"The pain may not be over, as the Fed is expected to remain as aggressive as needed until it sees a material and a persistent softening in inflation. The problem is, inflation doesn’t necessarily come from the demand side, meaning that even with an aggressive policy tightening, the Fed may not achieve its goal soon enough. So, what will happen now? Nothing new. Inflation will remain the major driving factor of the markets in the second half, and the overall market sentiment will hugely depend on inflation numbers."
On the macro front, S&P's June manufacturing PMI will be published at 1445 BST, while the Institute for Supply Management's June manufacturing PMI and May construction spending figures will follow at 1500 BST.
No major corporate earnings were slated for release on Friday.
Reporting by Iain Gilbert at Sharecast.com