Investing.com - Wall Street futures pointed to flat open on Tuesday in a session with few references as investors remained on hold ahead of key appearances from President-elect Donald Trump and Federal Reserve (Fed) chair Janet Yellen along with the kick off of the fourth quarter earnings season later in the week.
The blue-chip Dow futures lost 2 points, or 0.01%, by 7:01AM ET (12:01GMT), the S&P 500 futures fell less than a point, or 0.01%, though the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 futures was unchanged.
Pre-market trade saw little movement on Tuesday with only data on job openings and wholesale inventories for November out later in the session.
The major events on Tuesday’s economic calendar came earlier with data out of China showing that the recovery in the world’s second largest economy remains on track.
The National Bureau of Statistics reported earlier that China’s producer price index jumped 5.5% on a year-over-year basis, the fastest since September 2011 and up from 3.3% in November.
The consumer price index rose 2.1% in December from a year earlier, the agency said, slowing from 2.3% in the preceding month.
The greenback showed little movement against its major rivals on Tuesday, as some investors opted for caution ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s first news conference since his election victory on Wednesday.
Additionally, Fed chair Janet Yellen will make her first official appearance in 2017 on Thursday when she will be addressing educators nationwide discussing the mission and responsibilities of the Federal Reserve System.
After her remarks, Yellen will take questions from K-12 and post-secondary educators of economics, history, and related disciplines, who will be gathered at Federal Reserve Bank offices across the country.
The U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback’s strength against a trade-weighted basket of six major currencies, was up 0.05% at 101.98 by 7:02AM ET (12:02GMT).
The index fell to as low as 101.48 earlier, pulling further away from last week's 14-year high of 103.82.
However, the focus in currency markets continued to be centered on the pound which fell to a session low of 1.2107 against the dollar, a level not seen since October 25.
GBP/USD was last down 0.19% at 1.2136 by 7:02AM ET (12:02GMT).
With only a handful U.S. companies reporting earnings on Tuesday, investors were waiting for the quarterly reporting season to kick off in earnest on Friday with results from major banks such as JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM), Bank of America (NYSE:BAC), Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC) and PNC Financial (NYSE:PNC).
Analysts expect fourth-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies will show an increase of 6.1% from a year ago.
Company news flow was slow on Tuesday, with most eyes on Yahoo’s (NASDAQ:YHOO) announcement late Monday that it would rename itself Altaba Inc and Chief Executive Officer Marissa Mayer would step down from the board after the closing of its deal with Verizon Communications (NYSE:VZ).
Meanwhile, oil prices rebounded on Tuesday, after suffering their biggest one-day loss in six weeks in the prior session amid doubts over the implementation of a planned deal by global crude producers to scale back output.
U.S. crude futures gained 0.23% to $52.08 by 7:04AM ET (12:04GMT), while Brent oil advanced 0.16% to $55.03.