Friday, February 16, 2007 (9:20 AM ET)
US STOCKS-Wall St. set to open lower on China, Microsoft (Reuters)
(Updates with reaction to housing data)
By Jennifer Coogan
NEW YORK, Feb 16 (Reuters) - U.S. stock index futures pointed to a lower market open on Friday after credit tightening by China's central bank threatened to hit shares of U.S. companies and data showed weakness in housing in January.
Futures had fallen earlier after Microsoft Corp. <MSFT> Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said late on Thursday that analysts' revenue forecasts for the Vista operating system were "overly aggressive." For details, see [ID:nN15197950].
"There are two real negatives out there, China raising its reserve requirements last night and Microsoft's comments," said Paul Mendelsohn, chief investment strategist at Windham Financial Services in Charlotte, Vermont. "The market is already very overbought. It's a dangerous place to be."
S&P 500 futures <SPc1> were down 1.3 points, below fair value, a mathematical formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration on the contract.
Dow Jones industrial average futures <DJc1> fell 4 points, and Nasdaq 100 <NDc1> futures were down 3.5 points.
Ballmer's comments sent Microsoft shares down 1.6 percent to $29.01 in electronic trade before the opening bell.
The People's Bank of China ordered lenders to set aside another half a percent of their deposits in reserve at the central bank instead of lending out the money. [ID:nPEK151236].
Analysts said this could hurt U.S. industrial and commodity companies that have been big suppliers to China, such as Caterpillar Inc. <CAT> .
AMR Corp. <AMR> shares moved choppily after BusinessWeek magazine reported that the parent of American Airlines might be a buyout target of a group including British Airways <BAY> and Goldman Sachs [ID:nN15236883]. But sources familiar with the matter said the British airline and the U.S. investment bank have no current plans to bid for AMR [ID:nL16923187].
AMR shares rose 11 percent to $41.90 before the opening bell, but the stock shed some of that gain, dropping to to $39.60.
In other M&A news, BBVA <BBVA>, Europe's eighth-biggest bank by market capitalization agreed to buy U.S. bank Compass Bancshares Inc. <CBSS> for $9.6 billion [ID:nL16894072].
Compass shares were up 5.8 percent to $70.20 in electronic trading.
Stock futures fell after the government said the pace of U.S. home construction in January suffered the sharpest drop since October.
In another reporter, producer prices fell slightly more than forecast in January as energy prices declined sharply. ((Reporting by Jennifer Coogan
Editing by Kenneth Barry
)
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