Wall Street on economic, credit watch

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- U.S. stock futures were slightly lower Monday morning even as oil prices retreated, as investors attempted to recover from last week's steep drop and braced for a batch of economic reports and potential additional woes from top financial firms.

Oil prices fell below the $95 a barrel mark in Asia on reports that OPEC would discuss increasing its output at an upcoming meeting. NYMEX reported that a barrel of light sweet crude was down $1.34 to $94.98. But that wasn't enough to give a lift to stock futures.

A data deluge kicks off Tuesday with a report on pending home sales. Other key reports due out this week include retail sales Wednesday, which may offer clues about the health of consumer spending. Measures of wholesale and consumer inflation, to be released later this week, will also be eyed closely.

Stocks fell sharply last week after another round of big writedowns from Wall Street's leading banks reignited credit fears. Last week the blue-chip Dow lost 4.1 percent, while the S&P fell 3.7 percent and the Nasdaq dropped 6.9 percent.

Art Hogan, chief market analyst at Jefferies & Co., said the market doesn't have much in the way of news to pull it out of its recent sell-off, even though he believes stocks became oversold last week.

"We're groping for the bottom here, but there's not a lot to take us up for sure," he said. "There's no economic news today to help us. We need some combination of oil backing off or the dollar strengthening or a couple of days without another shoe dropping on writedowns."

Fortune magazine reported in an article on CNNMoney.com on Sunday that Citigroup (Charts, Fortune 500) delayed for more than a week - from Oct. 27 until Nov. 4 - the announcement of material information about the estimated $8 billion to $11 billion in writedowns it expects to record in the current quarter.

A statement from a Citigroup spokeswoman denied the nation's largest bank had done anything wrong. But the magazine reports in its online article that the delay may make the company vulnerable to shareholder lawsuits. Shares of Dow component Citigroup gained 1.4 percent in pre-market trading.

Citigroup rival JP Morgan Chase (Charts, Fortune 500) warned in a filing late Friday that "further markdowns could result if market conditions worsen" for its $6.8 billion of collateralized debt obligation as well as $40.6 billion in leveraged loans and unfunded commitments. Shares of that Dow component slipped 0.2 percent in pre-market trading.

Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America (Charts, Fortune 500) agreed on the structure late Friday of the previously announced $75 billion fund, popularly known as the Wall Street "superfund," which is designed to stabilize credit markets, according to a report in The New York Times.

Another firm that may report a hit from subprime writedowns could be HSBC (Charts), which was one of the largest lenders in the sector and which was one of the first banks to report problems with rising delinquencies and defaults on the loans a year ago. The Wall Street Journal reports in its "Heard on the Street" column Monday that HSBC could boost its reserves against losses in those loans by $2.4 billion to a total $4.5 billion. Shares of HSBC slipped 0.7 percent in London trading.

Private equity firm Blackstone Group (Charts) reported a net loss in the latest quarter due to compensation-related charges. The result missed analysts' forecasts and sent its shares plunging more than 10 percent in pre-market trading.

Tyson Foods (Charts, Fortune 500) reported that it posted a profit after a loss in the year-earlier period, but it fell a penny a share short of forecasts.

No. 1 computer chipmaker Intel (Charts, Fortune 500) unveiled its newest generation of processors Monday, a series of energy-saving chips designed to be used in servers and high-end gaming PCs. And IBM (Charts, Fortune 500) announced a $5 billion acquisition of Canadian business software company Cognos (Charts).

U.S. bond markets are closed in observance of Veterans Day.

Major markets in Asia finished sharply lower on mounting concerns about the subprime mortgage fallout. In Europe, stocks were mixed in midday trade.