Before the Opening Bell

S&P futures vs fair value: +6.50 at 938.20. As the European bourses finished the day with moderate gains ( Britain's FTSE 100 is up 0.44& and Germany's DAX also up 1.04%) , S&P 500 futures started the pre-market activity accordingly.

Today in my estimate is another important day. Productivity and costs will be announced at 8.30am. The consensus estimate for non farm productivity is 1.2% where unit labor cost is 2.8%. These numbers are rather not market movers however, since inflation now is an issue, the productivity growth becomes crucial because it acquires higher wages without the inflationary burden. It also increases the economical wealth of a nation since workers are more productive per hour.

As we talked about it yesterday, jobless claims will be released at 8.30am as well. The consensus estimate is 62K for new claims.

At 8.45am, we will be all ears at federal reserve chairman Mr. Ben Bernake's speech.