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New York - USstock index futures dipped on Thursday, setting Wall Street up for a third day of losses, as investors awaited a batch of economic data that may provide clues on how soon the Federal Reserve will start trimming back its stimulus efforts.
* US weekly jobless claims numbers for the week ended December 7 and US retail sales data for November will both be released at 13:30 GMT.
* US stocks posted their largest drop in a month on Wednesday as traders took profit after a provisional budget deal out of Washington removed one of the near-term reasons for the Fed to keep up its current pace of economic stimulus. The central bank's massive bond-buying programme has helped prop up the equity market for much of the year.
* Standard & Poor's said late Wednesday Facebook will join its S&P 500 benchmark index after the close of trading on December 20, cementing the social media network's rise into one of the biggest, most powerful US companies. The stock rose nearly 4% in premarket trading.
* Shares of Lululemon Athletica fell 12.2% in premarket trading after the company gave a weaker-than-expected outlook.
* Hotel operator Hilton Worldwide Inc raised $2.34bn in its IPO on Wednesday, returning to the public markets some six years after Blackstone Group took it private in one of the largest deals of the leveraged buyout boom.
* S&P 500 futures fell 2.2 points and were below fair value, a formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration on the contract. Dow Jones industrial average futures fell 34 points and Nasdaq 100 futures lost 3.25 points.
* Worries over the possibility of the US Federal Reserve reducing its stimulus efforts sooner than expected weighed on global equities, including European shares which slipped to a two-month low on Thursday.
* Samsung Electronics on Thursday lost its bid to ban sales of Apple's older iPhone and iPad in South Korea after a court dismissed a lawsuit claiming the US firm had infringed on three of Samsung's mobile patents.
