(Reuters) – U.S. stock index futures on Friday extended their loss-making streak on persistent concerns that the Federal Reserve’s resolve to combat runaway inflation could tip the economy into a recession.
Investors are trying to come to terms with Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s recent comments, signaling more policy tightening ahead, and the central bank’s projection that interest rates would breach the 5% mark in 2023, a level not seen since 2007.
Money market participants expect at least two 25 bps rate hikes next year and a terminal rate of about 4.9% by midyear, before falling to around 4.4% by 2023 end.
The benchmark S&P 500 and the Nasdaq suffered their steepest percentage drop in six weeks, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average falling the most in three months on Thursday.
Investors will monitor the S&P Global manufacturing and services PMI for December after the opening bell for more clues on the current state of the economy, and San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly’s comments to gauge the pace of future rate hikes at 12 p.m. ET.
Economic data on Thursday showed poor U.S. retail sales in November, even as the labor market remained strong with the number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits falling last week.
The simultaneous expiration of stock options, stock index futures and index options contracts later in the day, known as triple witching, could cause volatility through the trading session.
At 6:03 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis were down 419 points, or 1.26%, S&P 500 e-minis were down 53 points, or 1.35%, and Nasdaq 100 e-minis were down 118 points, or 1.03%.
Meta Platforms Inc jumped 1.7% in premarket trading after JP Morgan upgraded the stock to “overweight” from “neutral”.
Adobe Inc gained 4.2% after the company forecast first-quarter profit above expectations.
(Reporting by Shubham Batra and Ankika Biswas in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D’Silva)
