US stocks futures point to dip on Wall St after two days of gains

US stock futures pointed to another dip at the open for Wall Street on Tuesday, halting two days of gains that had somewhat cooled investor nerves about a burgeoning market correction, reports Reuters.

By 6:53 a.m. ET (1153 GMT), Dow e-minis were down 183 points, S&P 500 e-minis were down 17.25 points and the Nasdaq 100 e-minis were down 46.75 points.

The major indexes gained roughly 3 per cent over Monday and Friday, their best two-day period since June 2016, after declining in four of the previous five trading sessions to finish last week with its worst performance in two years.

Those falls wiped out all of the year's gains for the benchmark S&P 500 and the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average, which are now down 0.5 per cent and 0.7 per cent, respectively, so far in 2018.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq was still clinging to a 1.4 per cent gain for the year as of end of trade Monday.

Helping stocks on Monday was the announcement of President Donald Trump's budget, which included an infrastructure spending plan that boosted sectors such as materials and industrials.

A widely-followed measure of short-term stock market volatility, the CBOE Volatility Index, opened at 26.94 points, after two days of relative calm. The index had jumped above 50 points during last week's sell-off.