US STOCKS-Futures slide with commodities, Cisco; data eyed

* Silver, oil ETFs slide along with commodity prices

* Cisco shares down after warning of nearly flat sales

* U.S. weekly jobless claims, April PPI data on tap

* Futures off: Dow 61 pts, S&P 7.2 pts, Nasdaq 20 pts

* For up-to-the-minute market news see [STXNEWS/US] (Updates prices, adds comment, byline)

By Rodrigo Campos

NEW YORK, May 12 (Reuters) - U.S. stock index futures fell on Thursday as a continuing slide in commodities prompted an unwinding of bets on risky assets, including equities, while a sour outlook from Cisco hurt technology stocks.

The commodities slump is "front and center" among drivers of the equities market, said Rick Meckler, president of LibertyView Capital Management in New York.

"Watching commodities' volatility increase is just making people aware the potential exists for equity volatility to pick up in a similar fashion."

Investors will focus at 8:30 a.m. (1230 GMT) on the latest data on weekly applications for U.S. unemployment insurance. A Reuters survey forecasts 430,000 new applications were filed compared with a surprise jump to 474,000 in the previous week.

Also at 8:30 a.m. the Labor Department releases the April Producer Price Index. Forecasters are looking for a 0.6 percent rise compared with a 0.7 percent increase in March.

Investors are past the stage of wondering whether the economy will keep gaining momentum, Meckler said. "Now, the view is how strong that recovery will continue to be. We need not just good numbers but numbers that trend considerably stronger."

Cisco Systems Inc warned on Wednesday that it would fare worse this quarter than Wall Street had feared and laid out plans for global job cuts as it struggles to revive growth. Its shares were down 3.6 percent at $17.14 in premarket trade. [ID:nN11260314]

S&P 500 futures fell 7.2 points and were below fair value, a formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration of the contract. Dow Jones industrial average futures lost 61 points and Nasdaq 100 futures dropped 20 points.

The wave of profit taking in commodities pulled copper prices to their lowest level since Dec. 1, while spot silver lost more than 7 percent after tumbling about 9 percent Wednesday. The iShares Silver Trust dropped 5.7 percent to $32.42 in premarket trade.

The Reuters/Jefferies CRB index <.CRB>, a broad measure of commodity performance, has lost 8.8 percent so far in May.

U.S. crude futures lost 3 percent and the United States Oil Fund LP ETF fell 3.8 percent in premarket trade.

U.S. stocks on Wednesday nearly erased a three-day rally as energy and other commodity shares sank, feeding worries about the market's ability to stay on an upward path. (Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Padraic Cassidy)