Wall Street likely to fall due to tensions in Eurozone

U.S. stocks were set to open lower on Tuesday after anti-euro comments from an Italian lawmaker reignited investor worries over a euro zone breakup, while relief from a reworked NAFTA deal faded.

Italy would enjoy more favourable economic conditions outside of the euro zone, said Claudio Borghi, a eurosceptic who chairs the budget committee of the lower house of parliament.

Borghi later clarified but his comments pushed Italy's bond yields to multi-year highs, sparked a selloff In Italian banks and pressured world stock markets.

"Clearly a headwind coming into the day was European markets being soft... early trade is more driven by what's going on in the overall markets," said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at B. Riley FBR in New York.

Big U.S. lenders including Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Citigroup were trading down between 0.3 per cent and 0.58 per cent before the bell.

"Banks and bluechip stocks, in general, are off a bit and that's a little bit of a pressure point as we head into early trade," Hogan said.

At 8:36 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis were down 55 points, or 0.21 per cent. S&P 500 e-minis were down 4 points, or 0.14 per cent and Nasdaq 100 e-minis were down 20 points, or 0.26 per cent.

General Electric rose 2.1 per cent, continuing gains from the previous session when the company named Larry Culp chief executive, with RBC saying investor confidence in Culp "should put a floor in the stock."

Shares of Ford gained 0.1 per cent while General Motors dipped 0.6 per cent ahead of U.S. auto sales numbers for September, due later in the day

U.S. Steel Corp fell 2.2 per cent after Deutsche Bank downgraded the stock on concerns around free cash flow generation and operational inconsistencies.

Investors will keep an eye on Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell's speech on "The Outlook for Employment and Inflation" at 12:45 p.m. ET at a meeting In Boston.