Skip to footer

Stock market points to lower open

Stock market futures in US follow Europe, Asia lower. Stock market focus is on Greek debt deal and slowing growth in China.

|
Richard Drew/AP
Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange Friday. The stock market on March 12, 2012, looked to open lower, following sinking share prices in Europe and mixed markets in Asia.
  • By Associated Press

| NEW YORK

U.S. stock market futures followed most world markets lower Monday, as Europe prepared the final touches on a massive bailout for Greece, and China reported its biggest monthly trade deficit in at least a decade.

Dow Jones industrial average futures slipped 28 points to 12,835. Standard & Poor's 500 futures shed 3 to 1,363.80. Nasdaq 100 futures were off 4.5 to 2,639.

In Europe, finance ministers from the 17 countries that use the euro were getting ready to meet to finalize a $171.48 billion bailout for Greece, its second in as many years. European markets were calm heading into the meeting, following Greece's successful private debt swap last week.

Germany's DAX slipped 0.18 percent. The CAC-40 in France lost 0.3 percent and London's FTSE 100 index of leading British shares edged up 0.47 percent.

Asian markets were mixed after China said economic data for January and February showed growth slowing.

In China, the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index fell 0.2 percent while Hong Kong's Hang Seng added 0.2 percent. Japan's Nikkei 225 Index fell 0.4 percent and South Korea's Kospi dropped 0.8 percent.

The slowdown in China pushed oil prices down, as the report suggested global demand for crude may be slowing.

Oil dropped to near $106 a barrel Monday. But crude remains near 10-month highs, which has pushed gasoline prices up 45 cents per gallon since Jan. 1 to an average of $3.73 per gallon. The spike has generated some concern that high gas prices could weaken the U.S. economic recovery.

U.S. stocks to watch Monday include PepsiCo Inc., after the beverage and snacks maker named several new executives in what appeared to be a move to line up a successor to CEO Indra Nooyi. PepsiCo shares added 50 cents to $63.65 in premarket trading.

Also in the news is Sealy Corp., whose second-largest shareholder asked the mattress company to shuffle its board and blamed the largest shareholder, private equity firm KKR & CO., for problems at the company. Sealy shares were not trading premarket.

Defibrillator maker Zoll Medical Corp. shares climbed 24 percent to $93.24 after its board agreed to a buyout offer of $93 per share from Japan's Asahi Kasei Corp.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Stock market points to lower open
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Latest-News-Wires/2012/0312/Stock-market-points-to-lower-open
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe