Stock futures fall as investors assess dreary FedEx warning

U.S. stock futures fell Friday morning as Wall Street headed toward a losing week, and traders absorbed an ugly earnings warning from FedEx.

Dow Jones Industrial Average futures dropped by 181 points, or 0.58%. S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 futures declined 0.75% and 0.93%, respectively.

Shares of FedEx plunged 15% in extended trading after the shipments company withdrew its full-year guidance, and said it will implement cost-cutting initiatives to contend with soft global shipment volumes as “macroeconomic trends significantly worsened.”

The three major averages were on pace to notch their fourth losing week in five. The Dow Jones Industrial Average declined 3.70% this week, while the S&P 500 is 4.08% lower. The Nasdaq Composite is down 4.62%, headed toward its worst weekly loss since June.

During the regular session Thursday, the Dow dropped 173 points, or 0.56%, for its lowest close since July 14. The Nasdaq Composite slid 1.43%, while the S&P 500 fell 1.13%.

Traders are concerned that markets will retest June lows after a surprisingly hot reading in August’s consumer price index report indicated an increasingly difficult pathway to bring down inflation by the Federal Reserve.

“They might have a hard choice to make,” iCapital’s Anastasia Amoroso said Thursday on CNBC’s “Closing Bell: Overtime.”

“Before they were saying, we’re going to try to have a soft landing and bring down inflation. Now they may have to make a choice. It’s either a soft landing or bringing down inflation. In other words, they may have to engineer more of a crackdown on economic growth to bring down inflation,” she added.

On the economic front, traders are expecting the latest consumer sentiment data on 10 a.m. ET Friday.