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Stock index futures pointed to a slightly higher open for Wall Street, with no significant economic news but quadruple-witching on the table.
The expiration of four contracts—stock index futures, stock index options, stock options and single stock futures—happens once each quarter and is frequently both a bullish and volatile day on the markets.
Futures, though, pointed to only modest gains, hurt by an after-the-bell earnings report Thursday from Palm [PALM
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] in which the company beat analyst estimates but disappointed with its outlook. Shares fell about 3 percent in premarket trading.
Volume could be light, though, as traders leave early to begin the Jewish holidays.
Thursday's modest losses notwithstanding, stocks are on an impressive roll for a month that's historically the worst for stocks. The Dow is up more than 3 percent for September so far, the S&P 500 has chalked up a gain of 4.4 percent, and the Nasdaq is up 5.9 percent.
Both the S&P and Nasdaq are on pace for their seventh consecutive monthly gains.
One smaller cap stock that could grab some attention is Arena Pharmaceuticals, [ARNA
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] after an experimental obesity drug met its goals in a second late-stage study. However, the results fell short of a government guideline and shares tumbled nearly 20 percent in premarket trading.
Dow component Hewlett-Packard has a new board member: Marc Andreesen, best known as the co-founder of Netscape. He's also on the boards of eBay [EBAY
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] and Facebook.
- Peter Schacknow, Senior Producer, CNBC Breaking News Desk, contributed.
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Data is a real-time snapshot *Data is delayed at least 15 minutes