US pre-open: Futures mixed following Chinese inflation data

(Sharecast News) - US futures were pointing to a mixed open ahead of the bell on Thursday as investors looked ahead to this week's jobless claims data from the Labor Department and digested key inflation data out of China. As of 1215 GMT, Dow Jones futures were up 0.15%, while S&P 500 futures had the index opening 0.09% higher and Nasdaq-100 futures were down 0.07%.

The Dow closed 40.33 points lower on Wednesday, snapping the blue-chip's recent winning streak as investors digested comments from Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell.

China was in focus early on Thursday, with the Asian superpower's consumer prices falling in October amid a somewhat uneven post-Covid recovery. Data from China's National Bureau of Statistics revealed that its consumer price index had slipped 0.2% year-on-year last month, more than the 0.1% decline predicted by economists. Producer prices fell 2.6%, slightly better than the decline of 2.7% that had been pencilled-in but still enough to mark a 13th consecutive monthly drop.

The Federal Reserve will also continue to draw an amount of investor attention on Thursday, with traders continuing to hope that central banks around the world are now gearing up to shift away from tightening and toward the timing of the 2024 easing process.

On the macro front, weekly jobless claims data will be published at 1330 GMT, while Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell will deliver another speech at 1900 GMT.

In the corporate space, Disney shares were in the green after the entertainment giant posted better-than-expected quarterly profits overnight, while ridesharing firm Lyft was in the red after it said quarterly bookings had come in worse than expected and that it didn't anticipate seeing them improve in the current period.

Reporting by Iain Gilbert at Sharecast.com