Stock futures fall before housing data, Fed speeches

London (June 24)  Futures for U.S. stocks fell Tuesday, ahead of a packed schedule of data on the housing market and speeches by Federal Reserve officials.

Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average  DJU4 -0.13%    shed 32 points, or 0.2%, to 16,808, while those for the S&P 500 index  SPU4 -0.18%    slipped 4 points to 1,948. Futures for the Nasdaq-100 index  NDU4 -0.03%    lost 8.5 points to 3,786.

Housing reports will begin streaming in at 9 a.m. Eastern Time, with the release of separate home-price indexes from S&P/Case-Shiller and the Federal Housing Finance Agency for April. Both indexes have logged strong gains over the past few years, but the pace has slowed somewhat since last fall .

At 10 a.m. Eastern Time, a report from the U.S. Commerce Department may show new home sales increased to 440,000 in May, economists polled by MarketWatch predicted, on average. In April, the annual rate of new single-family home sales rose 6.4% to 433,000.

Despite recent inflation fears, the interest rate forecast looks tame. Yield-starved investors should consider bonds from Brazil and Mexico.

The new round of housing data arrives a day after the National Association of Realtors said sales of existing homes in May hit the fastest pace in seven months.

While the report was a “welcomed” result, sales have only modestly improved from the lows in activity at the start of the year, said Lindsey Piegza, chief economist at Sterne Agee. “Going forward, rising home prices will continue to exclude many potential home-buyers from entering the market, against the backdrop of lackluster income growth and still-tepid full-time, high-wage job creation. Warmer weather alone is not enough to restore housing market activity,” Piegza said late Monday.

A gauge of consumer confidence will arrive at 10 a.m. Eastern Time, and economists polled by MarketWatch expect the Conference Board’s survey to edge up to 83.5 in June, from 83 in May. Also due at 10 a.m. Eastern Time is the Richmond Fed’s manufacturing index for June.

Fed speakers

Investors will watch for comments from Charles Plosser, president of the Philadelphia Federal Reserve, who at 8:05 a.m. Eastern Time will talk about the economy and monetary policy at the Economic Club of New York.

Plosser, a voting member of the Fed’s rate-setting committee, “is considered hawkish, and the risk is that he will put more focus on the recent higher core inflation, even though the Fed continued its dovish tone last week,” said analysts at Danske Bank in a Tuesday note.

Also on the Fed speakers docket, New York Fed President William Dudley will address an accountants’ group in San Juan, Puerto Rico about the Puerto Rican economy at 2 p.m. Eastern Time. Dudley gets a vote at every Federal Open Market Committee meeting and is vice chairman of the interest-rate setting committee.

After the market closes, San Francisco Fed President John Williams will appear on a panel about the global economy, the U.S. budget and the Fed at Stanford Law School at 6:30 p.m. Eastern Time. Williams, who’s not a voting member this year on the Fed policy committee, last month said easy monetary policy will likely be in place longer than expected because of the “halting and relatively gradual” recovery in the U.S. economy.
 
Turning to corporate developments, Monsanto Co.  MON -0.09%    may grab attention during the regular trading session following a Bloomberg report that the seed giant held preliminary talks with Swiss rival Syngenta AG  SYT -2.58%      CH:SYNN +5.75%    about a $40 billion takeover. The months-long talks ended in May, when Syngenta’s management decided not to proceed with negotiations, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg.

Cruise company Carnival Corp.  CCL +0.69%     is expected to report per-share earnings of 2 cents on $3.6 billion in revenue, according to a survey of analysts by FactSet.

Drugstore chain operator Walgreen Co.  WAG -1.60%     is projected to have made 94 cents a share on $19.48 billion for its third quarter, in a Reuters survey of analysts.

In Asia overnight, equities ended mostly higher ahead of a presentation of an economic reforms package by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. In Europe, the Stoxx Europe 600  XX:SXXP -0.25%    turned lower after a downbeat German business confidence survey.

Among commodities, crude-oil  CLQ4 +0.12%     prices fell 11 cents to $106.06 while gold futures  GCQ4 +0.46%     rose roughly $7 to $1,325.