Wall Street futures down; eyes on Monsanto

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Stock index futures fell before the start of Wall Street trading on Thursday with the focus on quarterly earnings from agriculture company Monsanto (MON.N), jobs data and the Iowa presidential election caucuses.

In addition to Monsanto, home furnishings retailer Bed Bath & Beyond (BBBY.O) is the only S&P 500 company scheduled to report quarterly results.

"Today there is U.S. Challenger job cuts, ADP employment and initial jobless claims, all of which are likely to be looked at closely ahead of tomorrow's U.S. nonfarm payrolls," ABN said.

The Challenger report on December job cuts is due at 7:30 a.m. EST, the ADP December employment report at 8:15 a.m. EST and the Labor Department's weekly first-time jobless claims at 8:30 a.m. EST.

"Ahead of the U.S. employment report tomorrow, the effect of jobless claims on the market should be noticeably limited. The focus is more likely to be on the ADP employment survey," Commerzbank said.

But Goldman Sachs said the jobless claims data would be "an important staging post" for gauging the prospect of further rate cuts by the Federal Reserve. "We believe consumer-related equities are not yet out of the woods and broad cyclical equities remain vulnerable," Goldman Sachs said.

"Ongoing industrial weakness suggests that the outperformance of bonds over equities that has been a feature of the last quarter could continue," it added.

More clarity on that front could come from U.S. factory orders for November due at 10:00 a.m. EST.

With oil having hit $100 per barrel, eyes will also be on U.S. weekly inventory numbers due at 10:30 a.m. EST.

STOCKS IN FOCUS

At 5:55 a.m. EST, Dow Jones futures were down 0.2 percent, S&P 500 futures fell 0.1 percent and Nasdaq futures traded 0.3 percent lower.

The indicative Dow Jones index (.DJII), which tracks how the Dow stocks are traded in Frankfurt, was up 0.2 percent.

Stocks in focus could include Ford (F.N) and General Motors (G.M) as carmakers are due to release December U.S. sales data.

Eyes could also be on Superior Energy (SPN.N), which rose 7.4 percent in extended trade on Wednesday after the company said it has been awarded $750 million in contracts to decommission seven production platforms in the Gulf of Mexico.

Media companies such as NBC, part of General Electric (GE.N), News Corp. (NWSa.N), and Comcast (CMCSA.O) could be in the spotlight following an online report in The New York Times that The Weather Channel is to be put up for sale and could fetch more than $5 billion.

Polymer products maker Myers Industries (MYE.N) and packaged ice maker Reddy Ice Holdings (FRZ.N) are at the centre of leverage buyout deals under pressure to fall apart, according to arbitrage traders, after mortgage and vehicle fleet company PHH (PHH.N) terminated its $1.8 billion sale to General Electric and Blackstone (BX.N) due to the credit crunch.

The process of choosing the next U.S. president begins on Thursday in Iowa, which opens the state-by-state battle to choose the candidates for the November election.

The Democratic caucus begins at 7:30 p.m. EST, with Republicans starting 30 minutes later. Results could begin to appear within an hour or two.

On Wednesday, the Dow got off to its worst-ever start to a year, falling 1.7 percent. The S&P 500 (.SPX) lost 1.4 percent and the Nasdaq (.IXIC) dropped 1.6 percent.