US preopen: Wall Street futures dip ahead of high profile quarterly earnings

Price: 101.64

Chg: -0.42

Chg %: -0.41%

Date: 10:50

Price: 2,104.78 Chg: 2.72 Chg %: 0.13% Date: 10:54

Stock futures on Wall Street dipped on Monday as traders cut exposure to risk ahead of some high profile earnings as the first quarter reporting season gets underway this week.
Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.13% to 179500 while futures for the S&P500 lost 0.16% to 2092. Traders cited a disappointing Chinese trade data report together with declines in European stock markets.

On Friday, stocks finished higher with the DJIA above 18,000 for the first time in almost three weeks. On Monday, there’s little economic data of note other than the Federal budget for March, due in the afternoon in the US.

Attention will be on first quarter earnings with JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Johnson & Johnson all reporting numbers on Tuesday.

Analysts at FactSet noted that “based on the earnings calls to date, the stronger US dollar has been cited by the most companies in the S&P500 index as a factor that either had a negative impact on earnings or revenues for Q1, or is expected to have a negative impact on earnings and revenues in future quarters.”

The dollar continued to surge on Monday with the euro down 0.7% to change hands at $ 1.0543. WTI crude was up 1.41% at $ 52.37 per barrel while Gold was little changed at $ 1200 an ounce.