Wall St dives on economic, European worries | Reuters

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stock index futures sank on Thursday as a report that regulators were looking at the U.S. units of European banks shook up investors ahead of data on jobless claims and consumer prices.

Concerned about the European debt crisis, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has asked for more information about whether the banks have reliable access to funds needed to operate in the United States, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The market held on to the view that European policymakers were not doing enough to tackle the euro zone's debt crisis. European blue chips were down 3 percent, with banks among the biggest losers.

"Investors are realizing as each day passes that systemic risk is here to stay," said Andre Bakhos, director of market analytics at Lek Securities in New York.

The select sector SPDR financial ETF dropped 2.6 percent.

S&P 500 futures fell 24.9 points and were sharply below fair value, a formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration of the contract. Dow Jones industrial average futures lost 203 points, and Nasdaq 100 futures dropped 49 points.

Concern about the outlook for the global economy was underscored by a Morgan Stanley note on Wednesday cutting its 2011 and 2012 global gross domestic product estimates.

"These headlines are a jack-in-the-box. You know they're there, but they scare you anyway," Bakhos said.

Investors braced for a raft of economic data, including weekly jobless claims, the consumer price index (CPI), existing home sales and the Philadelphia Fed's business activity index.

Data on first-time applications for unemployment insurance was due at 8:30 a.m. EDT. Economists forecast a total of 400,000 filings, compared with 395,000 in the prior week.

July's CPI, also due at 8:30 a.m., was seen rising 0.2 percent, compared with a drop of 0.2 percent in June. Excluding food and energy items, CPI is expected to be up by 0.2 percent, compared with a June rise of 0.3 percent.

Shares of NetApp Inc fell 12.6 percent to $36.40 in premarket trading a day after the data storage equipment maker forecast a weak second quarter in a further indication of soft tech spending by governments and large companies.

Hewlett-Packard Co, Gap Inc and Sears Holdings Corp were due to report quarterly results.

Technology shares fell on Wednesday after Dell Inc's disappointing sales outlook fanned worries that weak economic growth will hurt earnings in the third quarter.

(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)

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