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* Weekly unemployment claims fall
* All eyes set on the Biden press conference later
* Nike skates on social media affect Xinjiang’s statement
* Futures out: Dow 0.45%, S&P 0.44%, Nasdaq 0.55% (Add comments; update prices)
March 25 (Reuters) – Wall Street’s major indices would open lower on Thursday, dragged down by technology and banking stocks, while data showed unemployment claims fell last week as the labor market continued to limping from a coronavirus-induced recession.
The Department of Labor’s weekly unemployment claims report, the most timely indicator of economic health, showed that initial claims for state unemployment benefits were down to 684,000 for the week ended March 20 from 781,000 the previous week.
“Most investors have assumed that we will return to a much more normal economy after this summer,” said Rick Meckler, a partner at Cherry Lane Investments in New Vernon, New Jersey.
“They assume the current figures are not as significant if one considers that the economy may reopen completely by the end of the year.”
The high-tech Nasdaq Composite fell this month as rosy economic projections raised demand for undervalued stocks, including energy, mining and industrial companies, but raised fears of higher inflation and a possible tax hike.
In testimony at this week’s Congress, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell expressed optimism about a strong U.S. economic rebound, while Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said future hikes will be needed of taxes to pay for public investments.
President Joe Biden is expected to set a new target for U.S. vaccinations against COVID-19 at his first formal press conference at the White House beginning at 1:15 p.m. (1715 GMT). Next week, a multimillion-dollar infrastructure plan is also planned in Pittsburgh.
“It’s a story of two different markets right now and it depends on what you want to focus the market on,” said Faron Daugs, founder and CEO of financial group Harrison Wallace.
“It wants to focus on stimulus, increased vaccinations and the reopening of economies or potential taxes, increased regulation potentially in certain sectors, extremely high spending and inflation.”
Economically sensitive banking stocks, including JPMorgan Chase & Co, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America, gave up early gains to fall between 0.3% and 0.7% in premarket trading.
Heavy technology stocks Facebook Inc., Alphabet, parent company of Google and Twitter Inc., fell between 0.8% and 2.7% ahead of their executives ’testimony to Congress about extremism and misinformation of their services.
At 8:50 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis were down 144 points, or 0.45%, S&P 500 e-minis were down 17 points, or 0.44%, and Nasdaq e-minis were down 100 were down 70.25 points, or 0.55%.
Shares of Nike Inc. fell 5.7% when the sporting goods giant faced a Chinese backlash on social media for its comments on reports of forced labor in Xinjiang.
Shares listed in the U.S. by Baidu Inc., Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and JD.Com Inc. were submitted after the U.S. securities regulator took steps to expel foreign companies from the stock exchanges if they did not comply with the audit rules of the USA. (Report by Devik Jain in Bengaluru; Edited by Arun Koyyur and Maju Samuel)