Stocks - U.S. Futures Slip on North Korea Fears
Investing.com - Wall Street futures pointed to a slightly lower open as tensions over North Korea resurfaced on Friday.
The blue-chip Dow futures slipped 10 points, or 0.04% by 6:57AM ET (10:57GMT), the S&P 500 futures dropped 2 points, or 0.09%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 futures fell 10 points, or 0.17%.
North Korea said on Friday it might test a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific Ocean after U.S. President Donald Trump vowed to destroy the reclusive country, with leader Kim Jong Un promising to make a "mentally deranged" Trump pay dearly for his threats.
The response came after Trump said in his first address to the United Nations on Tuesday that he would "totally destroy" North Korea, a country of 26 million people, if it threatened the United States and its allies, and called Kim a "rocket man" on a suicide mission.
Asian stock markets retreated in risk off trade on Friday, although European bourses managed to pull out of negative territory in early afternoon trading.
Stateside, market participants looked ahead to IHS Markit’s preliminary reading on business activity for both the manufacturing and services sector scheduled for release at 9:45AM ET (13:45GMT) Friday.
Markets will pay attention to a string of appearances from Federal Reserve officials, including San Francisco Fed president, John Williams, Fed Governor Esther George and Dallas Fed chief Robert Kaplan.
In company news, General Electric (NYSE:GE) is close to a deal to sell its industrial solutions unit to ABB for somewhere between $2.5 billion and $3 billion, according to sources cited by Bloomberg.
Meanwhile, oil prices edged higher on Friday as market participants waited to see if major oil producers would make any announcements about a possible extension of supply cuts beyond March 2018 after their meeting in Vienna.
Traders also looked ahead to the latest read on U.S. shale production when Baker Hughes releases its most recent weekly rig count data later on Friday.
U.S. crude futures gained 0.12% to $50.61 by 6:58AM ET (10:58GMT), while Brent oil traded up 0.16% to $56.52.
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