Bansari Kamdar

(Reuters) – U.S. stock futures fell on Thursday due to jobless claims data, fresh inflation figures and new Fed Reserve numbers that will give further clues about the Federal Reserve’s tightening policies. However, Delta Air Lines (NYSE) was the top-performing carrier on its strong earnings.

Data on producer prices and jobless claims at 08:30 am. ET comes after Wall Street made modest gains Wednesday, when producer prices data was available at 08:30 a.m.

In December, the producer price index (PPI), which measures final demand, is forecast to increase 0.4%. This compares with 0.8% in November. After rising by 9.6% in November, the PPI was likely to have risen 9.8% over the 12-month period ending December.

Delta Air Lines posted 2.2% gain in premarket trades after surpassing fourth-quarter earnings estimates. The company also announced that nearly 80% pre-pandemic levels revenue has been recovered.

The shares of American Airlines (NASDAQ) and United Airlines rose 1.6%, respectively.

In the next few weeks more U.S. businesses will release results for the fourth quarter 2021, and year-over-year earnings growth is expected to reach 22.4% according to IBES data by Refinitiv.

JPMorgan Chase (NYSE 🙂 will report Friday, along with Citigroup (NYSE: Wells Fargo (NYSE:). Next week will see results from large technology companies and mega-cap corporations. Netflix (NASDAQ:), due to report its findings on January 20.

The banks are among the top performers in the first year of 2019, with retail investors increasing their exposure before the earnings announcements. According to Vanda Research’s weekly report about retail flows (NASDAQ:), Banks were also among the most successful.

Prior to a White House meeting featuring their top executives (including representatives from Alphabet’s Google (NASDAQ)), Apple Inc(NASDAQ:) or Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ), major U.S. tech companies fell ahead of discussions about software security.

Fed Governor Lael Mindard will also be appearing at a Congressional hearing to support her nomination as deputy chairman.

Wells Fargo was joined by Goldman Sachs (NYSE :), JPMorgan, and Deutsche Bank (DE:), in projecting an aggressive tightening in U.S. monetary policy over the next months, and in estimating that the Fed will raise interest rates by four times this fiscal year.

7.03 AM ET ET increased 38 points or 0.11%. ET rose 0.75 points or 0.02% and fell 3.5 points or 0.02%.

Virgin Orbit, a recently listed satellite launch provider, gained 2.1% following a tweet that said it was on track to launch its first commercial satellite on Thursday at 1300 PST.