Stock futures were mixed in Wednesday's after-hours session, with investors awaiting the latest read on the jobs market, still unsettled by spiking prices that could throttle the recovery.
During Wednesday's regular session, fears of rising inflation hammered Wall Street after grim consumer price data sparked a sell-off in blue chip and technology shares, amplifying new concerns about the rebound from COVID-19. The Dow Jones Industrial Index (^DJI), S&P 500 Index (^GSPC) and Nasdaq (^IXIC) all plummeted, closing more than 2% lower on the day. Tech stocks suffering their worst day since March 18, according to Yahoo Finance data, while the Dow had its worst showing since late January.
“It’s good to take a breather, we’ve had such exceptional performance over the past year or so,” Teddy Parrish, founder of Parrish Capital, told Yahoo Finance on Wednesday. “This pullback today — it’s just common sense.”
After Friday's disappointing U.S. jobs report, all eyes on Thursday will be on initial jobless claims, which Wall Street expects to remain below the psychologically-important threshold of 500,000.
A weekend cyber-attack sharply drove up the cost of gas nationwide while sparking shortages, and those fears were partly alleviated after Colonial Pipeline — operator of the nation's largest fuel pipeline network — said late Wednesday that it began restarting service to the East Coast.