US stock index futures almost unchanged, awaiting Bernanke’s comments

U.S. stock index futures were little changed as investors are focusing their attention on Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s testimony to Congress and as Bank of England officials dropped their calls for more bond purchases.

Futures on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index expiring in September change upward less than 0.1% to 1,671.5 at 7:05 a.m. in New York. The contracts earlier advanced as much as 0.1% and fell 0.3%. Dow Jones Industrial Average futures are down 0.23% at 7:40 EDT time.

“Attention is likely to return to the quantitative-easing story later, as Ben Bernanke gives his testimony to Congress,” Richard Hunter, head of equities at Hargreaves Lansdown Plc in London, wrote in an e-mail for Bloomberg. “Given recent history, he is unlikely to be drawn on anything other than what is already in the public domain, which should allow investors to refocus on the further raft of U.S. companies reporting.”

At Bank of England Governor Mark Carney’s first meeting this month, the Monetary Policy Committee voted 9-0-0 to keep the target of its bond-buying program at 375 billion pounds ($566 billion). All nine also wanted to keep the key interest rate at a record-low 0.5%, according to the minutes of their July 3-4 meeting published earlier today. Some of BoE officials dropped their demands for more stimulus.

“In what might be viewed as a snub to former governor Sir Mervyn King, the entire committee voted to keep the asset purchase policy unchanged, with the two remaining doves flocking to the hawkish camp,” Chris Beauchamp, a market analyst at IG in London, wrote in e-mailed comments for Bloomberg. “With this out of the way, all attention turns to Ben Bernanke.”

The S&P 500 broke an eight-day winning streak yesterday as Fed Bank of Kansas City President Esther George, who has opposed the central bank’s bond-buying program this year, told Fox Business Network that tapering the quantitative easing is appropriate as the U.S. economy gathers enough momentum to sustain itself.

Twenty-one companies, including Bank of America Corp. and EBay Inc., are due to release results today. Per-share earnings topped estimates at about 72% of S&P 500 members that have already reported this month.

Meanwhile, Bank of America Corp., the second-biggest U.S. lender, said profit rose 63%, beating analysts’ estimates as the company kept tight cost management policy.