Stocks open lower, S&P 500 set to break winning streak

Photo: The Canadian Press

A worker wearing a protective mask cleans in front of an electronic stock board showing Japan's Nikkei 225 index at a securities firm Friday, Aug. 19, 2022, in Tokyo.

Stocks are opening lower on Wall Street, putting the S&P 500 index on track to break a four-week winning streak. The benchmark index was off 0.9% in the early going Friday. The Nasdaq was down even more as technology stocks had some of the biggest losses. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was also lower. Meme stock Bed Bath & Beyond sank 40% after the high-profile activist investor Ryan Cohen confirmed that he’s bailed out of the stock. General Motors rose after reinstating its dividend, and Foot Locker soared after replacing its CEO and reporting earnings that beat Wall Street’s estimates.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street is poised to open significantly lower Friday, threatening to drag major indices back into negative territory for the week with earnings season winding down.

Futures for the benchmark S&P 500 slid 0.8% and futures for the Dow Jones industrials fell 0.6% hours before the opening bell.

Gains on Thursday positioned the S&P, Dow, Nasdaq and Russell 2000 to finish positive for the week.

After a mixed bag of corporate earnings, more solid jobs data and a steady retail sales report, investors may already be looking ahead to the Federal Reserve’s annual Jackson Hole conference in Wyoming next week for indications of when and how much the U.S. central bank might raise its main borrowing rate.

Minutes of the Fed’s July meeting released this week said inflation still is too high and made clear the central bank will keep raising interest rates.

The Fed has raised interest rates twice this year by 0.75 percentage points, triple its usual margin. Forecasters expect a hike at the board’s September meeting, but whether it's another three-quarters of a point hike or a smaller one may be determined by whether the Fed is influenced more by an historically strong labor market or an economy that's contracted two quarters in a row.

In premarket trading, Foot Locker jumped more than 20% after the mall-based athletic gear retailer named former Ulta Beauty CEO Mary Dillon as its chief executive Friday, replacing Richard Johnson.

Bed Bath & Beyond continued its slide, losing 36% of its value in off-hours trading after high-profile activist investor Ryan Cohen confirmed that he’s bailed out of the meme stock, which had been sent soaring by retail investors this month. Shares were poised to open around $12 on Friday after reaching as much as $30 in intraday trading this week.

Bitcoin fell more than 8%, to $21,506.83 each, dragging the rest of the crypto market down with it.

In Europe at midday, the FTSE 100 in London inched up 0.2%, Frankfurt’s DAX lost 0.5% and the CAC 40 in Paris shed 0.4%.

In Asia, the Shanghai Composite Index lost 0.6% to 3,258.08 and the Nikkei 225 in Tokyo shed less than 0.1% to 28,930.33. The Hang Seng in Hong Kong added 0.4% to 19,838.10.

The Kospi in Seoul shed 0.5% to 2,495.03 while Sydney’s S&P-ASX 200 lost less than 0.1% to 7,110.40.

India’s Sensex lost 1% to 59,701.73. New Zealand and Southeast Asian markets retreated.

In energy markets, benchmark U.S. crude lost $1.40 to $89.10 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract surged $2.39 to $90.50 on Thursday. Brent crude, the price basis for international trading, fell $1.62 to $94.97 per barrel in London. It jumped $2.94 the previous day to $96.59.

The dollar rose to 136.81 yen from Thursday’s 135.91 yen. The euro fell to $1.0067 from $1.0091.