By Peter Nurse
Investing.com -- U.S. stocks are seen opening higher Thursday, bouncing after the previous session’s sharp losses, as investors cautiously await the release of key inflation data and more midterm elections results.
At 07:00 ET (12:00 GMT), the Dow Futures contract was up 60 points, or 0.2%, S&P 500 Futures traded 10 points, or 0.3%, higher, and Nasdaq 100 Futures climbed 55 points, or 0.5%.
The main stock indices closed with hefty losses Wednesday as the outcome of the midterm elections remained unclear, although it seemed likely Republicans would take control of the House.
The blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average fell over 600 points, or 2%, the broad-based S&P 500 dropped 2.1%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite closed 2.5% lower.
The political watch will continue Thursday, with the fate of the Senate, in particular, up for grabs. The races in Nevada and Arizona are still seen as too close to call, and a split would mean the Senate majority would come down to a runoff election in Georgia for the second time in two years.
Away from politics, investors will also be carefully studying the latest U.S. inflation data for clues as to the degree of monetary policy tightening by the Federal Reserve to expect in December - one more 0.75 percentage point increase or a smaller half-point hike.
The U.S. CPI for October is due at 08:30 ET (13:30 GMT) and is expected to show a year-to-year gain of 8%, the lowest since February, while on a monthly basis it is expected to gain 0.6%, compared with 0.4% the prior month.
New jobless claims for last week are due at the same time, and could help put more clarity on the condition of the labor market.
The turmoil in the cryptocurrency market is also creating a degree of uncertainty, with the decision of Binance to back out of the rescue of smaller crypto exchange FTX, after due diligence, leaving the latter on the brink of collapse.
There are more quarterly earnings to digest Thursday, with the likes of fashion retailers Tapestry (NYSE:TPR) and Ralph Lauren (NYSE:RL), as well as Aurora Cannabis (NASDAQ:ACB) due to report.
Oil prices edged lower Thursday, continuing to retreat on concerns for demand growth from China, the world’s largest importer, on renewed COVID restrictions as cases surge, coupled with a rise in U.S. crude oil inventories.
U.S. crude oil stockpiles rose by 3.9 million barrels last week, according to data from the Energy Information Administration Wednesday, taking inventories to their highest since July 2021.
The bulk of this increase, however, could be put down to a roughly 3.5M barrel drawdown from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
By 07:00 ET, U.S. crude futures traded 0.5% lower at $85.40 a barrel, while the Brent contract fell 0.3% to $92.35.
Brent prices have dropped more than 6% so far this week, while WTI is down more than 7%.
Additionally, gold futures fell 0.1% to $1,711.60/oz, while EUR/USD traded 0.6% lower at 0.9947.