Wall St futures signal weaker start for equities

New York: Futures for the Dow Jones industrial average, the Standard & Poor 500 and the Nasdaq 100 was down by 0.1 to 0.2 per cent, pointing to a slightly weaker start for equities on Wall Street on Friday.

Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke, on Thursday, in comments prepared for delivery to a conference at the European Central Bank in Frankfurt on Friday, hit back at critics of the United States central bank‘s controversial bond-buying programme and issued a thinly veiled attack on China‘s policy of keeping its currency depressed.

Reuters reported on Friday that Economic Cycle Research Institute released its weekly index of economic activity for the week ended November 12.

H.J. Heinz Company is scheduled to announce its second-quarter results. Wall Street has priced in a profit of 76 cents per share, steady with the same period one year ago.

Shares in Foot Locker jumped to trade 8.9 per cent higher after the bell on Thursday as the athletic footwear retailer posted third-quarter results that raced past Wall Street expectations.

Salesforce.com Incorporated beat Wall Street profit estimates on Thursday and forecast better-than-expected sales for the next fiscal year as more customers sign up for its ”cloud computing” services. Its shares rose by seven per cent.

The FTSEurofirst 300 index of top European shares fell by 0.3 per cent on Friday after rising 1.4 per cent in the previous session. The European benchmark is up more than 71 per cent from its lifetime low of March, 2009.

Japan‘s Nikkei average marked a five-month closing high above 10,000 for a second day on Friday, propelled by hedge fund inflows from overseas and with a fall in the yen providing additional support.

US stocks jumped on Thursday on expectations of a resolution of Ireland‘s banking crisis, but the S&P 500‘s inability to break through resistance suggested stocks could be in a tight range through the end of the year.

Initial aid talks between Ireland and a joint European/International Monetary Fund mission centered on ways to reduce the size of Irish banks considered too big and reliant on ECB funding, The Irish Times said on Friday, without citing sources.
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