Será que esta noticia vai ajudar a uma subida geral, isto é, desde os US até a este lado do atlantico...
É uma ajuda
U.S. stock futures up slightly before Fed minutes
31/05/2006 12:11
By Caroline Valetkevitch
NEW YORK, May 31 (Reuters) - U.S. stock futures edged higher on Wednesday after the market fell sharply the day before, but investors remained cautious before the release of minutes from the Federal Reserve's May interest rate-setting meeting.
Details from the Fed's May 10 meeting will be released at 2 p.m. (1800 GMT), with investors looking for hints on the outlook for U.S. interest rates after a long campaign of hikes.
The Dow Jones industrial average shed 1.6 percent, or 184 points, on Tuesday on worries over consumer spending, with all 30 companies in the Dow ending down for the first time since September 2004.
In corporate news, Costco Wholesale Corp. , the largest U.S. warehouse club operator, posted a profit that was just short of analysts' expectations. For details, see [ID:nN31316308].
S&P 500 futures were up 3.70 points, a touch above 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 were up 34 points, and Nasdaq 100 futures were up 6 points.
"Yesterday, we were coming off a holiday weekend, and it seemed like the buyers were still on vacation. There was no oomph at any time during the day," said Andre Bakhos, president of Princeton Financial Group in Princeton, New Jersey. "It will be very interesting to see if we can get some sort of bargain hunting coming off of this big slide."
In deal news, equipment maker ADC Telecommunications Inc. said it had agreed to buy Andrew Corp. in an all-stock deal worth about $2 billion. [ID:nN31183681]
In overseas markets, Japan's Nikkei slipped 2.5 percent and European shares opened more than 1 percent lower before recovering to rise 0.2 percent as investors snapped up cheap stocks like telecoms.
On Tuesday, the Dow Jones industrial average was down 184.18 points, or 1.63 percent, to end at 11,094.43. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index was down 20.28 points, or 1.58 percent, to finish at 1,259.88. The Nasdaq Composite Index was down 45.63 points, or 2.06 percent, to close at 2,164.74.
On the economic agenda, National Association of Purchasing Management-Chicago will release its May index of manufacturing activity at 10 a.m. (1400 GMT). Economists in a Reuters survey forecast a median reading of 56.0 in the month compared with 57.2 in April. ((Reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch