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U.S. stock futures inch higher with Fed speakers, OPEC in focus

Published 09/28/2016, 06:52 AM
Updated 09/28/2016, 06:52 AM
© Reuters.  U.S. stock futures inch higher ahead of Fed speakers, OPEC

© Reuters. U.S. stock futures inch higher ahead of Fed speakers, OPEC

Investing.com - U.S. stock markets pointed to a marginally higher open on Wednesday morning, as investors awaited comments from a barrage of Federal Reserve officials, including the Fed chair, for further clues on the path of future rate hikes.

Market players also waited to see if any kind of oil output deal can be salvaged from a meeting of major oil producers in Algeria later in the session.

The blue-chip Dow futures inched up 10 points, or 0.06%, by 6:50AM ET (10:50GMT), the S&P 500 futures tacked on 1 point, or 0.02%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 futures advanced 2 points, or 0.04%.

Wall Street ended higher on Tuesday as investors took heart from an apparent win for Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton over her Republican rival Donald Trump in the first U.S. presidential debate.

A handful of Fed policymakers are due to make public appearances on Wednesday that may offer insight into how divided they are about raising rates.

Fed Chair Janet Yellen appears before the House Financial Services Committee at 10:00AM ET (14:00GMT) on supervision and regulation.

Besides Yellen, Fed speakers include Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari at 8:45AM ET, St. Louis Fed President James Bullard at 10:10AM ET and Chicago Fed President Charles Evans at 1:30PM ET.

There are also appearances by Cleveland Fed president Loretta Mester at 4:35PM ET and Kansas City Fed President Esther George, who speaks at 7:15PM ET. Both are seen as hawks by the market after they dissented at the last meeting and voted to raise rates.

The Fed left rates unchanged at a policy meeting last week, but most officials signaled a hike was likely by the end of the year. However, markets remain skeptical of such a move, with investors slashing the possibility of a December hike to below 50%, according to Investing.com's Fed Rate Monitor Tool, down from over 60% after the Fed's policy meeting last week.

On the data front, the U.S. will release durable goods data at 8:30AM ET (12:30GMT), amid expectations for a decline of 1.4% in August. That number could affect GDP forecasts for the third quarter.

Meanwhile, OPEC members, led by Saudi Arabia and other big Middle East crude exporters, such as Iran and Iraq, will meet non-OPEC producer Russia on the sidelines of the International Energy Forum in Algeria at 14:00GMT (10:00AM ET) Wednesday.

There were hopes that major global oil producers could agree to a possible last-minute output freeze deal that would support the market.

However, according to market experts, chances that the meeting would yield any action to reduce the global glut appeared minimal. Instead, most believe that oil producers will continue to monitor the market and possibly postpone freeze talks to the official OPEC meeting in Vienna on November 30.

Traders also awaited fresh weekly information on U.S. stockpiles of crude and refined products. The U.S. Energy Information Administration will release its weekly report on oil supplies at 10:30AM ET (14:30GMT). After markets closed Tuesday, the American Petroleum Institute said that U.S. oil inventories surprisingly fell by 752,000 barrels in the week ended September 23.

Elsewhere, European and U.K. stock markets were broadly higher in mid-morning trade Wednesday, as a rally for embattled Deutsche Bank (DE:DBKGn) sparked gains in the banking sector.

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