Investing.com – U.S. futures slipped on Friday, amid news that the U.S. and China have pushed back tentative plans for a summit to sign a trade deal due to unresolved differences, raising doubts that the two will end their year-long dispute.
Terry Branstad, the U.S. envoy to Beijing, told The Wall Street Journal that no date has been finalized for a meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Jinping Xi as both sides feel there has not yet been enough progress.
“But we’re closer than we’ve been for a very long time,” he added, the WSJ reported.
The S&P 500 futures fell 10 points or 0.37% as of 6:42 AM ET (11:42 GMT) while Dow futures lost 97 points or 0.38% and tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 futures was down 33 points or 0.48%.
Oil stocks were among the hardest hit in premarket data after the Norwegian government recommended its sovereign wealth fund sell its shares in oil and gas companies to focus on more sustainable investment.
Royal Dutch Shell (NYSE:RDSa), Exxon (NYSE:XOM) and BP (NYSE:BP) all slipped over 1% on news, as the Norwegian wealth fund owns over 2% of Shell and BP and just under 1% each of Exxon, Chevron (NYSE:CVX), as well as services companies Halliburton (NYSE:HAL) and Schlumberger (NYSE:SLB)
Meanwhile, technology stocks fell, with Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) down 0.4% and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) falling 0.5%.
Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) inched up 0.09% after news that it got a $520 million worth of loans from Chinese banks to build a vehicle and battery factory plant in China.
Investors will also pay close attention to the U.S. employment report at 8:30 AM ET (13:30 GMT). Another broadly solid is expected, despite a slowdown in payroll growth.
In commodities, gold futures recovered 0.6% to $1,293.75 a troy ounce, while crude oil slumped 1.5% to $55.79 a barrel. The U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of six major currencies, fell 0.2% to 97.403. It had soared to its highest in nearly two years on Thursday after the European Central Bank cut its growth forecast for the euro zone this year to only 1.1%.