Wall Street Shares On The Path To Recovery

New York, NY (AHN) - Stocks on Wall Street are set to retreat on Thursday, a day after the stocks were battered on heavy sell off, and ahead of a set of economic reports.

The largest computer-services company also reaffirmed its full-year 2008 earnings per share target of at least $8.75, or year-to-year growth of 22 percent. The analysts had expected earnings of $8.74 a share for the full year.

At 8:21 a.m. EDT in New York, S&P futures were trading up by 9.30 points or 1.03 percent at 912.60 points, NASDAQ futures was moving up by 3.00 points or 0.24 percent at 1,232.00 points.

While Dow was trading lower at 82.00 points or 0.96 percent at 8,586.00 points at the same time in New York.

Oil futures continued its downward movement and remained below $75-a-barrel mark on Thursday. Recently, a light, sweet barrel for November delivery was trading down by $1.11 to $73.43 a barrel.

On Wednesday, the contract had finished $3.33, or 4.5 percent, to $71.23 a barrel overnight trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Citigroup and Merrill Lynch are expected to trail on the index as the financial firms reported losses of $2.8 billion and over $5 billion in the third quarter, respectively. Citigroup shares were down by 14 percent, Merrill Lynch was down by 14.6 percent.

EBay declined by 3.5 percent in Frankfurt trading on Thursday after the largest online auctioneer downgraded its annual earnings outlook.

In economic reports, the Labor Department is scheduled to release information on initial jobless claims for the week ended Oct. 11 at 8:30 a.m. EDT.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics is also scheduled to release information on its latest inflation measure, Consumer Price Index, at the same time in Washington.

Additional reports due include industrial production for September, a Philadelphia-area manufacturing report for October, the NAHB housing index for October and Energy Information Administration's data on crude and gasoline inventories.

In currency trading, the yen changed hands at 100.15 yen per U.S. dollar in Asia on Thursday, after it closed at 100.45 yen late Wednesday in New York.