“The impact baffles me — people can get very crazy and it can get very bad,"Ion-Marc Valahu, co-founder and fund manager at Clairinvest in Geneva. “So far earnings have been pretty good and we have two major banks today and we’ll see if that can turn the picture around. Oil needs to find a bottom.”

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S&P 500 Futures Signal Stock Losses on Oil; Intel, Goldman Fall
2016-01-15 12:22:17.416 GMT

By Roxana Zega
(Bloomberg) — U.S. index futuresfell, signaling an equity rebound will be short lived, as worries over global growth persisted and oil slid further.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. fell 1 percent in early New York trading after agreeing to settle a U.S. probe into its handling of mortgage-backed securities, a move that will cut its fourth- quarter profit by about $1.5 billion. Citigroup Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co. lost at least 1.4 percent ahead of their results.
Intel Corp. dropped 5.2 percent after its quarterly sales forecast missed estimates.
Standard & Poor’s 500 Index contracts expiring in March lost 1.5 percent to 1,886.75 at 7:18 a.m. in New York, after gains yesterday in energy and health-care shares pushed the benchmark to its biggest rally in a month. Contracts on the Dow Jones Industrial Average slid 240 points, or 1.5 percent, to 16,041.
“The impact baffles me — people can get very crazy and it can get very bad,"Ion-Marc Valahu, co-founder and fund manager at Clairinvest in Geneva. “So far earnings have been pretty good and we have two major banks today and we’ll see if that can turn the picture around. Oil needs to find a bottom.”
Concern over China’s slowdown and deepening crude losses have dominated investor sentiment in 2016, prompting the S&P 500’s worst-ever start to a year. Yesterday’s gains helped the benchmark almost erase its losses for the week. A decline today would cap a third weekly drop. Oil fell further on signs a global supply glut may worsen, and the Shanghai Composite Index entered a bear market.
Corporate earnings may offer cues on the strength of the U.S. recovery, with seven S&P 500 companies posting results today. Analysts project earnings for firms on the gauge fell 6.7 percent in the fourth quarter, and downgrades to global profit growth haven’t been this bad in seven years.
Investors will also assess a slew of reports on retail sales, industrial production and consumer sentiment. The Federal Reserve has stressed the pace of further rate increases will be gradual, but data-dependent. Traders are pricing in a 26 percent chance of the central bank acting in March, while odds for an increase this month have stayed low since the December liftoff.
The S&P 500 has declined 9.8 percent from its record in May, and is 2.9 percent above a low reached in August after a rout that was also triggered by anxiety over the impact of China’s weakness on worldwide growth.
Williams Cos. and Marathon Oil Corp. tumbled 7.3 percent or more in premarket trading, after energy shares yesterday surged the most since August.
Activision Blizzard Inc. lost 5.5 percent after Vivendi SA sold its remaining stake in the maker of video games. The stock almost doubled last year.