Futures point to a negative start
U.S. stocks were poised to open in the red on Thursday after the Federal Reserve maintained its current fed funds target range of 0%-to-0.25% on Wednesday, a widely expected move as the economy continues to recover from the steep downturn caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
However, the central bank reiterated its pledge to continue buying Treasury bonds mortgage-backed securities “at least at the current pace” to promote smoothly functioning financial markets.
The Fed also published its so-called dot plot—a visual representation of where Fed officials believe interest rates are going— which suggested interest rates will remain at the current range for at least the end of 2023.
As of 5:30 a.m. ET, the blue-chip Dow futures were down 265 points, or 0.95% to 27,672. The S&P 500 futures dropped 37.02 points, or 1.1% to 3,342.38 while the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 futures 123.88 shed 11,131.12.
Jobless claims in focus
The U.S. Labor Department is scheduled to publish its weekly unemployment claims report at 8:30 a.m. ET today.
Expectations are for another 850,000 Americans to have filed for first-time jobless benefits for the week ended Sept. 12 down from 884,000 claims filed a week earlier. Continuing claim are projected to fall to 13 million from 13.254 million.
Although weekly claims are down from the peak of more than 6.5 million recorded in early April, they remain historically high.
Before the coronavirus pandemic struck, new weekly claims were typically a little over 200,000 and the record high for weekly claims was 695,000, set in 1982.
Snowflake slides premarket after rocketing on Wall Street debut
Shares of Snowflake (NYSE: SNOW) tumbled in the premarket trading session Thursday after the cloud company surged 111.61% in its public-market debut in the previous session.
The Warren Buffett-backed company became the biggest software public offering of all time, raising $3.4 billion.
Snowflake its shares at $120 each late Tuesday and sold 28 million. The shares opened at $245, rose as high as $319 and ended the session at $254. Its underwriters earlier marketed the shares for $10 to $110 each, up from $75 to $85 on Monday.
As of writing, the stock was 2.83% to $246.75 a share in premarket trade.