Initial Jobs Claims May Weigh On Wall Street Stocks

New York, NY (AHN) - Stocks on Wall Street are likely to open on a mixed note on Thursday, ahead of jobless claims report. The U.S. stock index futures turned mostly red.

On Thursday, the Labor Department will report initial jobless claims for the week ended Jan. 3. The market analysts on Wall Street are expecting filings to jump back up towards 550,000 from the prior week's unexpected drop to 492,000.

At 7:03 a.m. EDT in New York, S&P futures were trading lower by 0.30 points or 0.03 percent to 904.90 points, NASDAQ futures was moving up by 2.75 points or 0.22 percent to 1,242.25 points.

While Dow was trading lower at 14.00 points or 0.16 percent to 8,730.00points at the same time in New York.

In addition, the government is scheduled to released data for December jobs losses in a report, which the economists are expecting to show a drop of 475,000 jobs last month, with the jobless rate to jump to 7 percent from 6.7 percent in November.

Oil futures reversed downward movement and moved up above $43-a-barrel mark on Thursday, after trading to the lowest level in more than seven years.

Recently, a light, sweet barrel for February delivery was trading higher by 2 percent to $43.48 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

On Wednesday, the contract plunged by as much as $5.95 or 12 percent to end at $42.63 a barrel, which is the largest one-day percentage drop in over seven years, on the New York Mercantile Exchange amid rising gasoline stockpiles in the United States.

Investors will look closely at the market reaction on technology sector's measures to streamline their operations amid deepening recession.

Dell Inc. dropped by 1.1 percent on reports that the company will slash more jobs by 1,900 people at a plant in the Irish city of Limerick.

Sun Microsystems Inc. dropped by as much as 3.7 percent after Goldman Sachs Group Inc. recommended to its clients selling the shares on "deteriorating fundamentals."

In currency trading, the yen strengthened and changed hands at 91.56 yen against U.S. dollar in Asia on Thursday, after it closed at 92.82 yen late Wednesday in New York.