US pre-open: Stocks seen a little weaker ahead of data, Fedspeak

US futures pointed to a slightly weaker open on Friday as investors eyed a slew of data including new home sales, manufacturing figures and the Baker Hughes oil rig count.

At 1135 BST, Dow Jones Industrial Average and Nasdaq futures were down 0.2%, while S&P 500 futures were off 0.1%.

Meanwhile, oil prices were recovering from heavy losses earlier in the week when they fell into bear market territory on the back of worries about oversupply. West Texas Intermediate and Brent crude were up 0.4% to $42.92 a barrel and $45.41, respectively.

Oanda analyst Craig Erlam said: "It’s been a relatively quiet week on the whole so far from an economic data perspective. The flash manufacturing, services and composite PMIs will give us something to look out for, with all three expected to notch up moderate improvements while doing little to convince people that the economy is recovering from its slow start to the year. Should the soft data continue into the third quarter, it may force the Fed into considering slowing the pace of tightening – as markets already appear to be pricing in – which they seem very reluctant to do.

"We’ll also get new home sales data which has been on a nice uptrend since the start of last year and comes after a decent beat on existing sales earlier in the week. Three Fed officials are lined up to appear today including Jerome Powell – a permanent voter on the FOMC – Loretta Mester and James Bullard. Mester and Bullard are both non-voters this year and the latter, as was evident by comments on Thursday, is among the more dovish officials. Still, it will be interesting to see how they interpret the recent data and whether they see any downside risks that will influence the pace of tightening."

Markit's manufacturing, composite and services PMIs are due at 1445 BST, while new home sales are at 1500 BST and the Baker Hughes oil rig count is at 1800 BST. Erlam argued that while oil prices are clawing back some of the losses from earlier in the week, there's little reason to believe this is anything more than a dead cat bounce and that next week may be another painful one.

On the corporate, financial stocks were likely to be in focus after the Fed's first round of annual stress tests for banks on Thursday showed that 34 banks have strong levels of capital. The second set of results is due next week.