US Stock Index Futures Rise; Alcoa Results Eyed

(REUTERS) -- U.S. stock index futures pointed to a higher open on Wall Street on Tuesday that would halt a four-session losing streak, with futures for the S&P 500 up 0.32 percent, Dow Jones futures up 0.34 percent and Nasdaq 100 futures up 0.44 percent at 0845 GMT.

Aluminum major Alcoa Inc. kick-starts the quarterly earnings season on Tuesday, the first company in the Dow Jones industrial average to report earnings for the January-March quarter and seen as a bellwether for the industrial sector.

On the macro side, economists in a Reuters survey forecast wholesale inventories for February, due at 1400 GMT, to rise 0.5 percent versus a rise of 0.4 percent in January.

European stocks fell 0.8 percent in morning trade on Tuesday, hitting 2-1/2 month lows following a long holiday weekend, as the market tracked Monday's sharp losses on Wall Street following disappointing U.S. monthly jobs data.

China returned to an export-led trade surplus of $5.35 billion in March, suggesting that a rebound in the global economy is lifting overseas orders just in time to compensate for a slowdown in domestic demand.

But a Reuters poll on Monday showed most major Wall Street firms expect anemic growth in the U.S. jobs market and a struggling economic recovery to force the Federal Reserve to undertake another massive round of monetary stimulus.

Facebook will pay $1 billion in cash and stock for Instagram, a 2-year-old photo-sharing application developer, in its largest-ever acquisition just months before the No. 1 social media website is expected to go public.

Sony Corp. forecast a record $6.4 billion net loss for the business year just ended, its fourth straight year of losses and double earlier forecasts, inflated by writing off deferred tax assets in the United States.

TSMC, the world's biggest contract chip maker, said on Tuesday that sales in March rose 0.7 percent from a year earlier and 9 percent from the previous month.

The Dow and the S&P 500 extended losses to a fourth day on Monday, as investors took their cues from last week's disappointing jobs report, which raised fresh concerns about the U.S. economy's recovery.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell 130.55 points, or 1.00 percent, to end at 12,929.59. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index slid 15.88 points, or 1.14 percent, to 1,382.20. The Nasdaq Composite Index dropped 33.42 points, or 1.08 percent, to close at 3,047.08.

(Reporting by Blaise Robinson; editing by Patrick Graham)