Stock Futures Point Lower as Hurricane Irma Barrels Toward Florida
New York (Sept 8) If you'd like to receive our daily "5 Things You Must Know" newsletter, please register here.
Stock futures were lower on Friday, Sept. 8, with investors again risk-averse heading into a weekend when Hurricane Irma is expected to batter the Florida coast.
Dow Jones Industrial Average futures were down 0.37%, S&P 500 futures fell 0.31%, and Nasdaq futures declined 0.28%.
Hurricane Irma was downgraded to a category 4 storm overnight, though the U.S. National Hurricane Center cautioned that it remained "extremely dangerous" and possibly "life-threatening" as it makes an expected landfall on the U.S. mainland on Saturday, Sept. 9. The NHC expects Irma to continue to move through the Bahamas, reaching the north Cuba coast before heading toward southern Florida.
Florida Gov. Rick Scott issued orders late Thursday to close all school colleges and universities in the state until at least Tuesday, Sept. 12, while all of the state's professional sports teams, as well as its major university athletic programs, cancelled weekend competitions.
The storm has killed 14 people on its path across the Caribbean, according to various local officials, and caused the evacuation of tens of thousands of island residents.
•Hurricane Irma Slows to Category 4, But NHC Warns Storm 'Extremely Dangerous'
Hurricane watch has kept trading nervous in recent days as investors assess the possible economic damage wrought by Irma even as the recovery from Hurricane Harvey continues. Harvey devastated the area surrounding Houston, the nation's fourth-largest city, with catastrophic, record-setting flooding in late August. Moody's said total losses from Hurricane Harvey will come in between $45 billion and $65 billion, with overall U.S. economic losses between $6 billion and $10 billion.
Crude oil prices were slightly lower on Friday morning ahead of a weekly read on drilling activity out from Baker Hughes later in the day. Drilling activity and refinery output have been on the fritz in the wake of Harvey. Historic flooding in Texas and Louisiana, energy-heavy areas, had taken a number of refineries offline and caused crude inventories to balloon in the past week.
West Texas Intermediate crude oil was down 0.4% to $48.92 a barrel on Friday morning.
Equifax Inc. (EFX - Get Report) plummeted more than 13% in premarket trading after disclosing that a massive security breach had compromised millions of people's private data. The credit reporting agency estimates that more than 143 million people had their names, Social Security numbers, birth dates and drivers license numbers exposed in the cyber attack.
Equifax said Thursday, Sept. 7, that criminals gained access to the information through its website in breaches between May and July. The company said it learned of the attack on July 29. The information accessed wasn't from Equifax's consumer and commercial credit databases, meaning that credit scores don't appear to have been exposed. However, the credit card numbers of 209,000 U.S. consumers and dispute documents belonging to an additional 182,000 people were accessed, according to Equifax.
•Equifax Shares Tank After Company Announces Data Breach of 143 Million Customers
Other stocks in the consumer finance sector such as LendingClub Corp. (LC - Get Report) and TransUnion (TRU - Get Report) were also lower on Friday morning.
TheStreet
