Stock futures strive to rally after latest sell-off

The S&P 500 is up 5.8% from its 2022 low hit in mid October, but remains down 20.6% for the year to date.

What’s driving markets

The penultimate session of 2022 was showing tentative signs of delivering some much needed festive cheer for the stock market.

The hand off from Asia and Europe was negative, however, with Hong Kong’s Hang Seng
HSI,
-0.79%
shedding 0.8% and the Stoxx 600
SXXP,
-0.06%
off 0.3% after Beijing’s easing of travel restrictions raised fears that COVID-19 may spread from China.

With little in the way of fresh market catalysts, U.S. investors are left to stress about how the Federal Reserve’s attempts to crush high inflation by raising borrowing costs will crimp the economy and hit corporate earnings in coming quarters.

Such concerns have weighed on sentiment for much of the year, with the highly-valued tech sector particularly badly battered. The Nasdaq Composite will start Thursday near its lowest in 30 months, having lost 36.4% since its peak in November 2021.

“This year really needs to end, now!” said Ipek Ozkardeskaya, senior analyst at Swissquote Bank, who noted that the latest dip for stocks leaves the U.S. benchmark in a precarious technical position.

“The S&P 500 [on Wednesday] slid 1.2% and closed below the 50% Fibonacci retracement on the latest rally. The index gave back half of gains collected from October to November. Trend and momentum indicators, and more importantly market sentiment remain supportive of a deeper dive to meet the major 61.8% Fibonacci retracement, at 3724 mark,” wrote Ozkardeskaya in a morning bulletin.

Economic data due for release on Thursday includes the weekly initial jobless claims report, published at 8:30 a.m. Eastern.