U.S. stock futures were lower on Friday, indicating a weak market open, as climbing oil prices and a disappointing revenue outlook from software powerhouse Microsoft Corp. weighed on Wall Street. Microsoft's revenue forecast, which slightly lagged analysts' expectations, was overshadowing results from Web search leader Google Inc. , whose quarterly sales and earnings beat estimates by a wide margin. The pace of earnings reports was scheduled to slow on Friday, with Schlumberger Ltd. , the world's largest oilfield services company, among a handful of big names reporting. It posted a third-quarter profit, reversing a year-earlier loss. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reported that some of the outside directors at Marsh & McLennan Cos. have talked about having its chief executive step aside amid New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's probe into the company's business practices, an investigation that has rocked the U.S. insurance industry. S&P 500 futures dipped 1.2 points, about even with fair value accounting for interest rates, dividends and time to expiration on the contract, indicating the market would open near unchanged. Dow Jones industrial index futures were down 6 points, while Nasdaq 100 futures slipped a point. "I think the market is due for a pull back, with oil approaching new highs and a mixed look from tech earnings," said Barry Hyman, chief investment strategist at Ehrenkrantz, King, Nussbaum. "Google was a great revenue story, but the Microsoft story still holds sway over the sector," Hyman said. "I'm looking for cautious trading today."
Oil prices pressed close to $55 a barrel on Friday on rising fears of a winter fuel supply crunch and robust but slowing economic growth in China, the world's No. 2 petroleum consumer. U.S. light crude traded 21 cents higher at $54.68 a barrel, extending a late Thursday recovery to come within 50 cents of Monday's all-time peak of $55.33. Prices have hit a succession of record highs over $50 for the past three weeks. The music industry is also a focus after the New York Times reported that Spitzer has also turned his attention to the record industry. Spitzer is taking aim at the music industry's practices for influencing what songs are heard on the radio, and has served subpoenas on the four major record corporations -- Vivendi Universal's Universal Music Group, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, the EMI Group Plc and the Warner Music Group, the newspaper said. Meanwhile, technology giants Microsoft and online bookseller Amazon.com Inc. were lower in after-hours trade a day after they released their third-quarter results. Amazon's guidance for 2005 also came in below what the market was expecting, to overshadow a tripling in quarterly earnings. The Nasdaq ended 1 percent higher on Thursday, led by a rise in semiconductor shares, but the blue-chip Dow was knocked down to a fresh two-month low by a fall in industrial bellwether Caterpillar Inc. .///www..com