Wall St eyes higher open after sharp fall; service sector data awaited

• Wall Street's main indexes were set for a higher open on Thursday, after losing 3pc in the past two sessions on fears that the domestic economy was heading toward a recession.
• "If the contraction in manufacturing activity translates to weakness in the far larger services sector, then it's time to get seriously worried,"

Wall Street's main indexes were set for a higher open on Thursday, after losing 3pc in the past two sessions on fears that the domestic economy was heading toward a recession.

Investor attention is now on ISM's services data due later in the day and a pivotal jobs report on Friday after dismal manufacturing and hiring data earlier in the week showed the US-China trade war was hurting the US economy.

The ISM services report due at 10:00 a.m. ET (1400 GMT) is likely to show a reading of 55 in September, down from 56.4 in August.

"If the contraction in manufacturing activity translates to weakness in the far larger services sector, then it's time to get seriously worried," said Hussein Sayed, chief market strategist at FXTM.

The gloomy factory activity data and private jobs report have led to two straight days of more than 1pc drop in the benchmark S&P 500 for the first time this year and set the Dow on course for its worst week in four months.

The benchmark index is now nearly 5pc below its all-time high hit in July even though it came within striking distance of that level two weeks ago.

At 7:13 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis were up 48 points, or 0.18pc. S&P 500 e-minis were up 6.25 points, or 0.22pc and Nasdaq 100 e-minis were up 23.5 points, or 0.31pc.

PepsiCo Inc rose 2.3pc in premarket trading after the company beat quarterly expectations as higher advertising and new low-calorie versions of Gatorade boosted demand for its beverages in North America.

Shares of larger rival Coca-Cola gained 0.5pc.

Tesla Inc shares dropped 4.7pc as the electric-car maker's quarterly deliveries missed analysts' estimates.

GoPro Inc tumbled 17.5pc after the action camera maker cut its revenue and profit forecasts for the rest of the year, hit by a delay in the production of its latest Hero8 Black cameras.