U.S. stock futures were mostly lower Thursday morning, following Wednesday's sharp selloff. Concerns over spending, which triggered Wednesday's declines continued to reverberate this morning ahead of Wal-Mart's (NYSE: WMT) and a few other retailers' results. Investors were surprised Wednesday to find retail sales were less than expected. With the economy shedding jobs at record rates it shouldn't be that surprising. Nor should the realization -- as economists have warned time and again -- that the economy will recover slowly, much slower than Wall Street would like.
This morning, two economic data points on employment and inflation are due at 8:30 AM. Investors will be particularly interested in the weekly initial jobless claims report as they look ahead to any signs of recovery. April producer price index, or inflation at the wholesale level, is expected to show a 0.1% and 0.2% growth in core PPI and PPI respectively.
Trying to help the housing sector, the Obama administration is expected to expand its mortgage aid program on Thursday.
Overseas, Asian stock markets has a bad day Thursday as signs of distress among American consumers deflated hopes for a faster end to the global recession. Every major market in Asia closed down sharply lower, with Japan and Hong Kong indexes down around 3%. European shares did a little better and were choppy on Thursday.
Meanwhile, oil prices, which have been rallying, fell to below $57 a barrel Thursday for the same reasons. The International Energy Agency cut its monthly oil demand forecast for the ninth time and said it expects global oil consumption to fall by 3% in 2009 to 83.2 million barrels a day this year, or 2.6 million barrels a day less than in 2008.
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