Wall Street points toward losses to wrap a tumultuous week

Indian stocks close week in green, Sensex and Nifty closed 0.6-0.7 per cent higher on Friday

Wall Street pointed lower early Friday as a wobbly banking sector continued to be the focus in the U.S. and abroad.

Futures for the Dow Jones industrials fell 0.5% and futures for the S&P slipped 0.3%.

Despite a tumultuous week of wild swings spurred by the failure two U.S. banks, markets are still on track to finish with gains for the week.

The past few days, markets’ focus has turned Switzerland’s Credit Suisse and San Francisco’s First Republic.

First Republic tumbled 13% in premarket Friday, wiping out gains triggered Thursday after a group of 11 big banks offered a $30 billion lifeline to the latest troubled U.S. lender. First Republic Bank rose 10% Thursday after slumping as much as 36% early in the day.

The S&P 500 jumped 1.8% Thursday, erasing earlier losses following the reports that First Republic Bank could get help or sell itself to another bank. Markets have gyrated this week on concerns over the toll on banks from the fastest set of interest rate hikes in decades. The turmoil flared with last week’s collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history.

“The market remains cautious; traders do not want to get overexcited, especially with investors still focusing on what can go wrong instead of what could go right,” Stephen Innes of SPI Asset Management said in a report.