U.S. stock futures rose in premarket trade on Thursday as investors weighed minutes from the Federal Reserve’s latest meeting and fresh employment data from Washington.
Futures tied to the S&P 500 rose 0.3 percent, while Dow Jones Industrial Average futures added 150 points, or roughly 0.5 percent. Technology Nasdaq Composite contracts advanced 0.4%.
Initial jobless claims unexpectedly rose last week in a potential sign that the labor market may be cooling amid tighter financial conditions. Initial claims for U.S. unemployment insurance totaled 235,000 for the week ended July 2, up 4,000 from the previous week’s figure of 231,000, the Labor Department said on Thursday. Economists polled by Bloomberg had expected the latest reading to reach 230,000.
The print comes ahead of the government’s monthly employment report for June, due out on Friday.
Elsewhere, shares of Bed Bath & Beyond ( BBBY ) rose on news that the interim CEO had bought shares, and shares of GameStop ( GME ) rose more than 6% in the open after the video game retailer and meme darling announced late Wednesday that its board had approved a four-for-one stock split in the form of a dividend.
Tesla ( TSLA ), Amazon ( AMZN ) and Shopify ( SHOP ) have also recently announced stock splits that increase the company’s share count to give more investors access to buy without changing market capitalization.
Crude oil rose but remained just below $100 a barrel after falling below that threshold for the first time since mid-May on Tuesday. The benchmark 10-year Treasury yield held at 2.9% after falling from a decade high of more than 3.4% in mid-June.
Thursday’s gains in futures followed three straight days of gains for the S&P 500. In the previous session, the benchmark closed up 0.4% – along with slight gains for the Dow and Nasdaq – after reading the minutes of the Federal Reserve’s meeting on 14 -June 15 confirmed that the US central bank has committed to intervene if necessary to control inflation.
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“Participants agreed that the economic outlook calls for a shift to a more restrictive policy stance and acknowledged the possibility that an even more restrictive stance may be appropriate if elevated inflationary pressures persist,” the minutes of the meeting said.
Officials also discussed concerns that inflation is taking root in the U.S. economy and price stability is becoming increasingly difficult to restore.
American flags fly from the NYSE during Independence Day weekend on July 03, 2022 in New York City. (Photo: John Lamparski/Getty Images)
“Many participants felt that a significant risk now facing the committee is that elevated inflation could take hold if the public begins to question the committee’s resolve to adjust the policy stance as warranted,” the report said. the protocol.
At the same time, concerns remain that further interest rate hikes to tame inflation could push the economy into recession, especially as key economic data including consumer sentiment and spending, along with the latest purchasing managers’ indexes, show signs of softening in the latest prints. The Atlanta Federal Reserve’s GDPNow model now estimates real GDP growth in the second quarter of 2022 at -2.1%, which would meet the unofficial threshold for a recession when compared to the 1.6% decline in Q1. The official GDP reading for the second quarter is expected on July 28.
The Federal Reserve is “nervous that it could raise interest rates too quickly and start a recession,” University of Chicago business economics professor Austan Goolsby told Yahoo Finance Live on Wednesday. “It’s a difficult balancing act that the Fed has made tighter due to the fact that this business cycle doesn’t look like a normal business cycle.”
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Alexandra Semenova is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter @alexandraandnyc
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