Stocks are set to open flat to a touch higher on Thursday as investors put their disappointment over the Federal Reserve's modest interest rate cut behind them and looked ahead to the earnings season.
The market retreated in the prior session after the Fed's rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee cut rates by a quarter of a percentage point to a 45-year low of 1 percent, dashing some investors' hopes for a heftier cut.
"I'm looking for a mixed open, possibly a little better on an oversold bounce after the markets got skittish yesterday," said James Volk, director of institutional trading at D.A. Davidson & Co.
With the Fed's decision now past, investors will be watching for clues to how corporate America's second-quarter results are likely to stack up and to whether the economy is gathering steam.
"There's really no change in the story here in terms of valuations. People are worried about capital expenditures, IT (information technology) spending and the economy picking up," Volk said. "So until these things straighten out a little bit more, these markets are going to be in a trading range."
Standard & Poor's 500 stock index futures for September were up 1.30 points at 973.20, while Nasdaq futures for the same month were up 2.50 points at 1,192.
The government's final revision to first-quarter gross domestic product and a report on weekly jobless claims, both due at 8:30 a.m. (1230 GMT) could help give traders their early cues.
Economists polled by Reuters predicted first-quarter GDP rose 1.8 percent, while they forecast jobless claims slipped to 415,000 last week from 421,000 in the prior week.
Investors will also have a handful of earnings reports to sift through, including results from food maker ConAgra Foods Inc. CAG.N and the world's largest athletic shoemaker, Nike Inc. NKE.N
A number of deals or potential deals were likely to garner some attention.
Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. LEH.N , a top investment bank, is in talks to buy asset manager Neuberger Berman Inc. NEU.N for about $3 billion, according to newspaper and wire service reports.
American International Group Inc AIG.N said on Thursday it would buy General Electric Co.'s GE.N Japanese life insurer for around $2.15 billion to expand in Asia's richest market.
Laboratory equipment maker Fisher Scientific International Inc. FSH.N said on Thursday it has agreed to buy Sweden's Perbio Science AB PBIO.ST for a total of $714 million, in a bid to enhance its life-science business.
Business software maker Manugistics Group Inc. MANU.O was also in focus after it reported a narrower net loss as revenue declined, but its shares fell sharply on Wednesday after the business software maker warned of weaker revenues ahead.
Symbol Technologies SBL.N , a maker of bar-code scanners whose accounting practices are under investigation, said it again will delay filing its annual report and added that more of its fiscal 1999 and 2000 revenue would be affected by the restatement.
In overseas trading, European blue chips were mixed. The pan-European FTSE Eurotop 300 .FTEU3 was 0.03 percent lower at 860 points.
Japan's blue-chip Nikkei dipped on Thursday, reflecting disappointment over the U.S. Fed's modest rate cut, but the broader market gained as investors snapped up laggards such as Furukawa Electric and some steel and metal shares.
The benchmark Nikkei average .N225 ended down 0.10 percent at 8,923.41.
The market retreated in the prior session after the Fed's rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee cut rates by a quarter of a percentage point to a 45-year low of 1 percent, dashing some investors' hopes for a heftier cut.
"I'm looking for a mixed open, possibly a little better on an oversold bounce after the markets got skittish yesterday," said James Volk, director of institutional trading at D.A. Davidson & Co.
With the Fed's decision now past, investors will be watching for clues to how corporate America's second-quarter results are likely to stack up and to whether the economy is gathering steam.
"There's really no change in the story here in terms of valuations. People are worried about capital expenditures, IT (information technology) spending and the economy picking up," Volk said. "So until these things straighten out a little bit more, these markets are going to be in a trading range."
Standard & Poor's 500 stock index futures for September were up 1.30 points at 973.20, while Nasdaq futures for the same month were up 2.50 points at 1,192.
The government's final revision to first-quarter gross domestic product and a report on weekly jobless claims, both due at 8:30 a.m. (1230 GMT) could help give traders their early cues.
Economists polled by Reuters predicted first-quarter GDP rose 1.8 percent, while they forecast jobless claims slipped to 415,000 last week from 421,000 in the prior week.
Investors will also have a handful of earnings reports to sift through, including results from food maker ConAgra Foods Inc. CAG.N and the world's largest athletic shoemaker, Nike Inc. NKE.N
A number of deals or potential deals were likely to garner some attention.
Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. LEH.N , a top investment bank, is in talks to buy asset manager Neuberger Berman Inc. NEU.N for about $3 billion, according to newspaper and wire service reports.
American International Group Inc AIG.N said on Thursday it would buy General Electric Co.'s GE.N Japanese life insurer for around $2.15 billion to expand in Asia's richest market.
Laboratory equipment maker Fisher Scientific International Inc. FSH.N said on Thursday it has agreed to buy Sweden's Perbio Science AB PBIO.ST for a total of $714 million, in a bid to enhance its life-science business.
Business software maker Manugistics Group Inc. MANU.O was also in focus after it reported a narrower net loss as revenue declined, but its shares fell sharply on Wednesday after the business software maker warned of weaker revenues ahead.
Symbol Technologies SBL.N , a maker of bar-code scanners whose accounting practices are under investigation, said it again will delay filing its annual report and added that more of its fiscal 1999 and 2000 revenue would be affected by the restatement.
In overseas trading, European blue chips were mixed. The pan-European FTSE Eurotop 300 .FTEU3 was 0.03 percent lower at 860 points.
Japan's blue-chip Nikkei dipped on Thursday, reflecting disappointment over the U.S. Fed's modest rate cut, but the broader market gained as investors snapped up laggards such as Furukawa Electric and some steel and metal shares.
The benchmark Nikkei average .N225 ended down 0.10 percent at 8,923.41.
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