By Peter Nurse
Investing.com - U.S. stocks are set to open largely lower Friday, with investors fretting about the likelihood of additional stimulus as policymakers head home for their summer recess.
At 07:15 AM ET (1100 GMT), US 500 Futures traded 27 points, or 0.2%, lower, the Dow Futures contract fell 122 points, or 0.4%, while Nasdaq 100 Futures gained 10 points, or 0.1%. That said, all three cash indexes are still on course for a positive week.
“We are miles apart in our values,” Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker and leading Democrat, said Thursday at her weekly press conference in Washington, talking about negotiations over the size and scope of the next stimulus bill.
Across the Capitol, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, officially sent senators home for a three-week summer recess.
This all suggests that the U.S. economy will not see a new package before September, drawing dangerously close to the period when the two parties hold their respective presidential nominating conventions, leading into November’s national election.
Meanwhile, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned earlier this week that the U.S. should be bracing for “the worst fall, from a public health perspective, we’ve ever had.”
“We’re going to have Covid in the fall, and we’re going to have flu in the fall. And either one of those by themselves can stress certain hospital systems,” CDC director Robert Redfield said, noting many hospitals have already been overwhelmed by the number of coronavirus patients.
In Europe, the U.K. imposed a two-week quarantine on people arriving from France and the Netherlands, in response to recent sharp increases in the rate of new coronavirus infections in those countries.
The main U.S. economic data release Friday is the July retail sales number, due at 8:30 AM ET (1230 GMT), which is expected to have increased 1.9% in July, a clear slowdown from the sharp gains in May and June.
Elsewhere, earnings releases are due from the likes of DraftKings (NASDAQ:DKNG) and Madison Square Garden Sports (NYSE:MSGS), but most eyes are likely to be on the legal battle between ‘Fortnite’ maker Epic Games and Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG) over what the publisher sees as abusively high commissions taken for processing in-app purchases.
Oil prices edged lower Friday, weighed as the latest Covid-19 developments in Europe pointed to a fresh hit to fuel demand.
The OPEC+ producer bloc, which also includes Russia, will meet next week in the form of its Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee to discuss production levels.
U.S. crude futures traded 0.2% lower at $42.16 a barrel, while the international benchmark Brent contract fell 0.2% to $44.89.
Elsewhere, gold futures dropped 0.9% to $1,952.60/oz, settling into a lower range after registering all-time highs above $2,000. EUR/USD traded 0.1% lower at 1.1808.