US pre-open: Futures point to losses amid recessionary fears
Wall Street futures were in the red ahead of the bell as market participants began to give up on the Federal Reserve's ability to engineer a soft landing.
As of 1225 GMT, Dow Jones futures were down 0.23%, while S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 futures had the indices opening 0.39% and 0.61% lower, respectively.
The Dow closed 350.76 points lower on Tuesday after the Commerce Department revealed that the US trade deficit had widened in November.
Concerns about the state of the US economy remained in focus early on Wednesday, with investors trying to determine wether or not an economic downturn was on the horizon.
AvaTrade's Naeem Aslam said: "US and European futures are picking up the moment where they left off yesterday. Traders have been hoping after the recent rally in the US stock indices that they will finally get to see the end of the bear market. However, the price action in the last week told us a different story, and that is, the bear market has a long way to go. This is because we are still hearing more adverse news in terms of companies laying off staff or announcing more job cuts. In addition to this, yesterday, most of the bank CEO, including Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan's CEO, came out with a more cautionary tone and warned about the potential of the recession taking place in 2023."
Also drawing an amount of investor attention was news that China's dollar-denominated exports had fallen 8.7% year-on-year in November, a markedly bigger drop than the 3.5% decline expected by economists.
On the US macro front, mortgage applications fell 1.9% in the week ended 2 December, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association of America, with the refinance index increasing 5% week-on-week and the purchase index decreasing 3%.
Still to come, October consumer credit change figures will be published at 2000 GMT.
In the corporate space, Campbell Soup and GameStop will both report earnings on Wednesday.
Reporting by Iain Gilbert at Sharecast.com