NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Stocks were set to fall early Thursday following government trade and jobs reports, but were still anticipating the closely watched report on U.S. fuel inventories.

U.S. stock futures turned lower in early trading after the U.S. government reported that the country's trade deficit grew to its third-highest level on record.

The Labor Department reported that the number of new unemployment claims fell by 2,000 to 389,000 in latest week.

\Oil prices were also lower ahead of the weekly inventory report at 10:30 a.m. ET, which is a day later than normal this week due to the Columbus Day holiday.

The November light crude futures contract for NYMEX was up 5 cents to $64.17 a barrel in electronic trading, while the November contract for Brent crude gained 7 cents to $60.64.

"There are quite a few platforms still out of service throughout the Gulf," said Bill Adams, chief energy and capital markets strategist for LaSalle Futures in Chicago. "Everyone is waiting to see what the builds are going to be. If they show a build, you could see a sell-off in oil, and that could give stocks at least a little bit of lift."

Major markets in Asia closed mostly lower Thursday, although Hong Kong's Hang Seng closed slightly higher. Major European markets were lower in early trading.

Treasury prices were lower, lifting the yield on the 10-year note to 4.48 percent from the 4.44 percent level late Wednesday. The dollar gained ground against the euro and the yen.

In corporate news, online search company Google (Research) and No. 1 cable operator Comcast (Research) are holding talks with Time Warner (Research) about a possible purchase of a stake in its America Online unit, a source close to the situation told CNN/Money, which is a unit of Time Warner.

Dow component McDonald's (Research) reported strong sales and said its earnings report next week would be slightly better than forecasts.

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