US pre-open: Stocks set to slip as investors wait on news from Capitol Hill
Wall Street is being called to start lower as financial markets wait on news of Congress's eagerly anticipated fiscal stimulus plan to help shore up the economy, even as economists forecasts continue to come down.
A case in point, on Thursday morning, analysts at BofA Securities marked down their projection for global GDP growth in 2020 to 0%, which would match the "major" recessions experience in 1982 and 2009.
Not least, Chinese GDP was now seen cratering at a 30% pace in the first quarter of the year.
"The evolving news on COVID-19 has triggered "forecast leap frogging," with economists and strategists repeatedly lowering their forecasts. Here we take a big leap, as we try to make our forecast robust to the near-term news flow," BofA said in a research note sent to clients.
Against that bacdrop, the S&P 500 was being called to start the day down by 59.25 points to 2,342.25, alongside a 458 point fall for the Dow Jones Industrials to 19,395.0, while the Nasdaq Composite was 129.25 points lower at 7.076.25.
In parallel, the yield on the benchmark 10-year US Treasury note was drifting lower by two basis points to 1.16%.
West Texas Intermediate crude oil futures on the other hand were bouncing 8% to $22.15 a barrel on NYMEX.
Overnight, the US Federal Reserve unveiled a liquidity facility for money market mutual funds in order to prevent the risk of a run on them, an event that echoed the financial strains seen during the worst moments of the last financial crisis.
And there was speculation that the Fed might yet ramp-up its quantitative easing further.
Congress meanwhile was expected to unveil a package of stimulus measures worth roughy $1.3trn.