Wall Street Might Open Broadly Higher

The weekly Jobless Claims and Pending Home Sales might be the highlights on Thursday. As markets are ready to plunge into a holiday mode, the trading activity might be subdued.

In the Asian session, Gold climbed to a three-week high.

Early signals from the U.S. Futures Index suggest that Wall Street might open broadly higher.

Asian shares finished mostly up, while European shares are trading mostly lower.
As of 7.25 am ET, the Dow futures were down 52.00 points, the S&P 500 futures were adding 1.25 points and the Nasdaq 100 futures were progressing 46.25 points.

The U.S. major averages eventually finished Wednesday modestly higher. The Dow rose 111.19 points or 0.3 percent to37,656.52, the Nasdaq edged up 24.60 points or 0.2 percent to 15,099.18 and the S&P 500 inched up 6.83 points or 0.1 percent to 4,781.58.

On the economic front, the International Trade in Goods (Advance) for November will be issued at 8.30 am ET. The consensus is for a deficit of $89.6 billion, while the deficit was $89.8 billion in the prior month.

The Labor Department’s Jobless Claims for the week is scheduled at 8.30 am ET. The consensus is for 210K, while it was up 205K in the prior week.

The Retail Inventories (Advance) for November will be released at 8.30 am ET. In the prior month, the inventories were 0.0 percent.

The Wholesale Inventories (Advance) for November will be published at 8.30 am ET. The consensus is for a decline of 0.2 percent, while it was down 0.2 percent in October.

The Pending Home Sales Index for November is expected at 10.00 am ET. The consensus is for an increase of 0.8 percent, while it was down 1.5 percent in the prior month.

The Energy Information Administration or EIA’s Natural Gas Report for the week will be released at 10.30 am ET. In the prior week, the gas stock was down 87 bcf.

The Fed Balance Sheet for the week is scheduled at 4.30 pm ET. In the prior week, the Level was at $7.724 trillion.

The Seven-year Treasury Note auction will be held at 1.00 pm…