U.S. Stock Futures Move Lower as Strong Rally Fades

By Scott Kanowsky

Investing.com -- U.S. stock futures point toward a lower opening on Wall Street on Wednesday, potentially ending a strong multi-day rally to kick off the final quarter of 2022.

At 06:19 ET (10:19 GMT), the Dow Futures contract was down 280 points, or 0.92%, S&P 500 Futures traded 34.50 points, or 0.92%, lower, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 Futures dropped by 104 points, or 0.88%.

The slide comes after a strong showing for Wall Street so far this week, with the S&P 500, in particular, registering its largest two-day climb since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic in April 2020. The uptick was extended into Asian dealmaking, but has since lost steam since markets opened in Europe.

Much of that prior surge in the U.S. was sparked by weak U.S. employment data, which showed the biggest slide in job openings in almost two and a half years in August. This downturn suggested a potential cooling in America's red-hot labor market and, in turn, led investors to hope that the Federal Reserve may begin to back away from a recent bout of aggressive monetary policy tightening.

The main U.S. equity indices closed sharply higher Tuesday, with the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average gaining more than 825 points, or 2.80%. The broad-based S&P 500 rose 3.06% and the Nasdaq Composite gained 3.34%.

The slide in futures was also accompanied by a broad selloff in global bond markets as well as continued strengthening in the U.S. dollar.

In particular, government debt in the U.K., which was at the center of tumultuous trading in Britain last week, saw the benchmark United Kingdom 10-Year jump by 0.14 percentage points to 4.0155%. The United Kingdom 2-Year - often a barometer of interest rate expectations - added 0.10 percentage points to 4.001%.

Treasuries also moved higher. The key United States 10-Year gained 0.08 percentage points to climb to 3.695%.

Meanwhile, the greenback surged, with the dollar index - a measure of the currency against a basket of six of its peers - rising by 0.71% to 110.85.

In corporate news, Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) shares edged down slightly into the red in premarket trading, after they moved sharply higher on Tuesday on a report that Elon Musk would offer to buy the social media company for the initially agreed upon price of $44 billion. Musk later confirmed the speculation in a letter to Twitter.

Elsewhere, oil prices were higher as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies hold a major meeting today. Reports suggest that the oil group, known as OPEC+, will unveil a substantial slash in crude output.

The move would mark the largest cut since the COVID-19 pandemic, and comes as OPEC+ looks to give renewed support to oil prices after a drastic fall since the middle of the year.

By 07:00 ET, U.S. crude futures traded 0.59% higher at $87.03, while the Brent contract rose by 0.63% to $92.38.

Additionally, gold futures dropped by 0.54% to $1,721.15/oz, while EUR/USD was down 0.60% at $0.9923.