Stock Futures Mixed After Jobless Claims Data

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Stock futures were trading mixed early Thursday with a worse than expected jobs number being weighed against a smooth Spanish bond auction and a solid round of earnings reports.

Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average were up 3 points, or 11.8 points below fair value, at 12,960. Futures for the S&P 500 were up 0.1 points, or 2.4 points below fair value, at 1378. Futures for the Nasdaq were rising 6.8 points, or 10.8 points below fair value, at 2701.

Wall Street lost ground Wednesday, weighed down by lackluster earnings from tech heavyweights Intel(INTC) and IBM(IBM) and nervousness about the market appetite for Spanish debt.

Spain ended up selling €2.54 billion of two-year and 10-year bonds, which came in higher than the targeted range of €1.5 billion to €2.5 billion. The Spanish government was able to sell the 10-year bonds at an average yield of about 5.7%, whereby demand for the security was about 2.4 times what was sold versus about 2.2 times at a Jan. 19 auction. The average yield for the two-year was about 3.5%.

In the U.S., the Labor Department reported that jobless claims fell by 2,000 to 386,000 in the week ended Apr. 14, from an upwardly revised 388,000 in the previous week. The number was worse than expected, as economists polled by Reuters forecast a total of 370,000 new jobless claims filings.

The four-week moving average was 374,750, an increase of 5,500 from the previous week's 369,250. The number of people continuing to receive jobless benefits increased by 26,000 in the week ended Apr. 7 to 3.3 million.

Still on today's economic calendar are existing home sales for March at 10 a.m., the Philadelphia Fed regional manufacturing index for April at 10 a.m., and leading indicators for March at 10 a.m. Existing home sales probably rose to 4.62 million in March from 4.59 million in February, according to Reuters.