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Stock futures point to higher open
11/25/09 08:01 EST-deear lead
Stock futures pointed to a higher open Wednesday as investors prepared to examine fresh data on consumer spending and sentiment, new home sales and the job market a day after the Federal Reserve provided a more upbeat view of U.S. economic prospects.
Overseas markets moved higher, lifted by the expectation that interest rates will remain low.
Investors have been sending stock prices higher over the week. Record-low interest rates and the resulting slide in the dollar have been major forces behind the recent surge in stocks.
Traders are entering trading Wednesday looking for further signs of economic recovery.
New filings for unemployment benefits likely will show a slight improvement while analysts expect consumer spending rebounded in October after an auto-related plunge in September. Sales of new homes are also expected to grow, propelled by first-time buyers taking advantage of a special tax credit.
Even with signs of strength, economists worry the recovery could falter if consumer spending, which makes up 70 percent of economic activity, drops in the face of unemployment that is already at the highest point in 26 years and is expected to keep rising.
Economists expect a Commerce Department report on personal income and spending to show that spending rose 0.5 percent in October after falling 0.5 percent in September, according to Thomson Reuters. Income is expected to rise 0.2 percent after being flat in September.
The report is due out at 8:30 a.m. EST.
Later in the day, the Reuters/University of Michigan's final report on consumer sentiment in expected to be revised up to 67 from a preliminary reading of 66, but will still be below the October reading of 70.6.
Investors will also get an update on the job market when the Labor Department releases its weekly report on first-time claims for unemployment benefits. Economists expect that claims ticked down by 5,000 to a seasonally adjusted 500,000 last week, from 505,000 the previous week.
The report is also due out at 8:30 a.m. EST.
Ahead of the opening bell, Dow Jones industrial average futures rose 39, or less than 0.4 percent, to 10,444. Standard & Poor's 500 index futures rose 4.70, or 0.4 percent, to 1,107.80, while Nasdaq 100 index futures rose 8.50, or 0.5 percent, to 1,795.00.
Investors will also get data on new home sales for October. The Commerce Department is expected to report that sales rose to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 410,000, up from September's rate of 402,000.
The report is scheduled to be released at 10 a.m.
A weakening dollar has bolstered commodities and stocks of energy and materials companies, helping drive shares higher in recent weeks.
The dollar was mostly lower Wednesday against other major currencies, while gold prices rose.
Meanwhile, bond prices fell. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note, which moves opposite its price, rose to 3.32 percent from 3.31 percent late Tuesday. The yield on the three-month T-bill, considered one of the safest investments, rose to 0.05 percent from 0.03 percent.
Overseas, Japan's Nikkei stock average rose 0.4 percent. Britain's FTSE 100 rose 0.6 percent, Germany's DAX index rose 0.5 percent, and France's CAC-40 rose 0.6 percent.
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| Symbol | Last | Change | Volume | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| S | 3.75 | -0.15 | 3.85% | 114.34M | |
| SNV | 1.49 | -0.12 | 7.45% | 43.30M | |
| T | 27.10 | 0.32 | 1.19% | 34.56M | |
Biggest % Gainers
| Symbol | Last | Change | Volume | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IWA | 16.00 | 3.31 | 26.08% | 8.45M | |
| BYG | 7.32 | 0.95 | 14.84% | 2,700.00 | |
| LDL | 6.20 | 0.74 | 13.55% | 361,940.00 | |
Biggest % Losers
| Symbol | Last | Change | Volume | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WH | 3.37 | -1.00 | 22.88% | 2.86M | |
| GRO | 3.50 | -0.67 | 16.07% | 500.00 | |
| ING | 12.52 | -1.74 | 12.20% | 2,200.00 | |
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—(The Communist Manifesto)
On the other hand, Marx argued that socio-economic change occurred through organized revolutionary action. He argued that capitalism will end through the organized actions of an international working class: "Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality have to *************. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence." (from The German Ideology)
While Marx remained a relatively obscure figure in his own lifetime, his ideas began to exert a major influence on workers' movements shortly after his death. This influence gained added impetus with the victory of the Marxist Bolsheviks in the Russian October Revolution in 1917, and few parts of the world remained significantly untouched by Marxian ideas in the course of the twentieth century.
Marx argued that capitalism, like previous socioeconomic systems, will inevitably produce internal tensions which will lead to its destruction. Just as capitalism replaced feudalism, he believed socialism will, in its turn, replace capitalism, and lead to a stateless, classless society called pure communism. This would emerge after a transitional period called the "dictatorship of the proletariat": a period sometimes referred to as the "workers state" or "workers' democracy" .
See, for example, Marx's comments in section one of The Communist Manifesto on feudalism, capitalism, and the role internal social contradictions play in the historical process: "We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whose foundation the bourgeoisie ************ up, were generated in feudal society. At a certain stage in the development of these means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal society produced and exchanged...the feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder. Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a social and political constitution adapted in it, and the economic and political sway of the bourgeois class. A similar movement is going on before our own eyes.... The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring order into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property."
Marx argued for a systemic understanding of socio-economic change. He argued that the structural contradictions within capitalism necessitate its end, giving way to communism: