U.S. stock futures extend fall after retail sales drop LONDON (MarketWatch) - U.S. stock futures dropped on Wednesday as a surprise decline in retail sales twinned with oil-price worries to encourage traders to lock in profits made since March. S&P 500 futures fell 15.3 points to 891.50 and Nasdaq 100 futures fell 21.5 points to 1,363.50. Dow industrial futures dropped 124 points. 1) Those futures took a turn for a worse as data showed import prices rose more quickly than forecast, and retail sales slipped 0.4% in April. The retail sales fall was the eighth decline in ten months. 2) The import price rise came on petroleum price rises, as oil becomes a greater focus for the market. After touching $60 a barrel on Tuesday, crude edged 20 cents lower to $58.65 a barrel ahead of the release of weekly energy inventories. "So much for green shoots," said TJ Marta, a fixed-income strategist for Marta on the Markets LLC. "First of all, they're not as green as hoped, and second, they're highly vulnerable to the inflation threat." 3) The euro dropped to session lows and Treasury bond prices rose after the economic data. 4) Meanwhile, Credit Suisse's global equity strategists said they're becoming more defensive, saying the price-to-book of cyclical companies relative to defensive firms is now nearly one standard deviation above its normal range, and the price-to-earnings ratio relative to the market is even more extreme. 5) Also of note, Intel /quotes/comstock/15*!intc/quotes/nls/intc (INTC 15.30, +0.09, +0.59%) climbed 1.8% as the CEO Paul Otellini told analysts that the business was a little better than expected during the second quarter, and Intel separately was fined 1.06 billion euros ($1.45 billion) by the European Commission over alleged antitrust violations.
cashed out a little bit too early, 58.80. going to put in a short i think. > small short 59.15, let's see what fortunes the EIA brings today