Stock Market Today: Dow Futures Fall; S&P 500, Nasdaq Set to Open Down as Well

Dow Jones Industrial Average futures were down 34 points, or 0.1%. S&P 500 futures were losing 0.1% and Nasdaq 100 futures were down 0.3%.

U.S. markets didn’t look set to take on the momentum from Chinese stock markets as seen the previous day. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index was rising 3.1%, as Asian investors continued to applaud a raft of Chinese stimulus measures announced this week.

The People’s Bank of China lowered the reserve requirement ratio for banks by 0.5 percentage point, effective immediately, bringing the average RRR to around 6.6%, the central bank said early Friday before the start of stock and bond trading. In addition, the PBOC cut the interest rate on seven-day reverse repurchase agreements–its key policy rate–by 20 basis points, lowering it to 1.5%.

American investors will be watching the release of the personal consumption expenditures price index, due for release at 8:30 a.m. Eastern on Friday, which is the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation. The key figure will be the monthly rate of core PCE inflation, which is forecast to round to 0.2% on a monthly basis, steady with the price growth measured in June and July.

“Even in the case of a small deviation from consensus, the recent shift in the Fed’s focus to the employment side of its mandate means markets are less sensitive to inflation news,” wrote ING analyst Francesco Pesole in a research note.

The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note stood at 3.777% early on Friday, ticking down from the previous week.