U.S. Stock Futures Fall After Powell Dents Hopes for More Cuts

(Bloomberg) -- U.S. stock-index futures dropped during Asian trading hours on Thursday after Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell dented hopes that the central bank would carry out a series of interest-rate cuts.

S&P 500 Index contracts fell 0.2%, after dropping as much 0.5%, as of 8:17 a.m. in Tokyo. Contracts on the Nasdaq 100 slipped 0.3%, while those on the Dow Jones Industrial Average were down 0.2%. The S&P 500 Index fell 1.1% on Wednesday as volume surged.

Powell said Wednesday’s first interest rate cut since the financial crisis was to “insure against downside risks.” U.S. President Donald Trump said “as usual, Powell let us down,” adding the market wanted to hear the Fed was beginning an aggressive rate-cutting cycle.

The Fed’s 25 basis point cut came as expected though some in the market were hoping for a reduction of 50 basis points, said Jun Bei Liu, a portfolio manager at Tribeca Investment Partners Pty Ltd in Sydney. Powell’s commentary continued to be dovish and he may be trying to get the market to not price in the next cut too quickly, she said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Heejin Kim in Seoul at hkim579@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Lianting Tu at ltu4@bloomberg.net, Naoto Hosoda, Tim Smith

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.