(Reuters) – U.S. stock futures pointed to a fresh round of selling on Friday, sparked by growing expectations of quicker interest rate hikes from the Federal Reserve following data that showed soaring inflation.
The S&P 500 and the Dow fell more than 1% on Thursday, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq slumped 2% after data showed consumer prices surged 7.5% in January, marking the biggest annual increase in 40 years. The numbers raised fears about an aggressive tightening of monetary policy.
St. Louis Fed Bank President James Bullard, a voter on the Fed’s rate-setting committee this year, told Bloomberg News on Thursday he wants a full percentage point of rate hikes over the next three policy meetings.
Traders are pricing in a half-point rate hike in March with just a scant chance of a smaller quarter-point hike, and heavy bets for a policy path that would bring rates to a range of 1.75%-2.00% by the end of the year.
Highly valued growth stocks such as Apple Inc, Amazon.com Inc and Microsoft Corp inched lower in premarket trading, pointing to more weakness for the Nasdaq.
At 07:20 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis were down 84 points, or 0.24%, S&P 500 e-minis were down 12.5 points, or 0.28%, and Nasdaq 100 e-minis were down 53.75 points, or 0.37%.
Despite the market volatility, all the three major indexes were on track for weekly gains, helped by strong earnings, easing of tensions in Ukraine, reduction in COVID-19 cases and lifting of mask mandates in some states.
Investors are awaiting the University of Michigan’s Consumer Sentiment Index that is expected to rise to 67.5 in February from 67.2 in January, the lowest since November 2011.
Online real-estate platform Zillow Group Inc jumped 13.3% after beating Wall Street estimates for quarterly sales, boosted by an 11-fold increase in revenue in its homes segment.
Cloudflare Inc rose 4.0% on breakeven earnings and a better-than-expected full-year outlook.
(Reporting by Bansari Mayur Kamdar in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel)
