By Angela Moon
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stock index futures pointed to a flat open on Monday after data showed U.S. consumer spending slightly rose in May, even as savings touched their highest level in eight months.
The Commerce Department said spending edged up 0.2 percent after being flat in April. Analysts polled by Reuters expected consumer spending to rise 0.1 percent.
"Personal spending was a little on the strong side, which is good to see, but it's still very, very slow," said Pierre Ellis, senior economist at Decision Economics in New York.
At the Group of 20 nations summit in Toronto over the weekend, leaders agreed to take divergent paths on ways to trim budget deficits while ensuring the global economic recovery remains intact, and softened a 2012 deadline for banks to build up higher levels of capital and liquidity.
But the message was not enough to boost confidence of investors.
"The headlines read well from the G20, and it is certainly a step in the right direction, but it is basically a goodwill event, and we are not going to see a major impact (on stocks)," said Peter Cardillo, chief market economics at Avalon Partners in New York.
S&P 500 futures lost 0.9 points and were below fair value, a formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration on the contract. Dow Jones industrial average futures fell 6 points, and Nasdaq 100 futures fell 0.75 points.
Last week, major stock indexes recorded their weakest performance in five weeks. The Dow index <.DJI> fell 2.9 percent, the S&P 500 was off 3.6 percent, and the Nasdaq Composite fell 3.7 percent.
U.S. President Barack Obama's efforts to win final approval for a financial regulatory overhaul bill looked more complicated over the weekend after a Republican senator threatened to oppose it.
BP
Oil fell toward $78 a barrel on Monday, after earlier touching the highest in almost eight weeks, as concern eased about the impact on supply from tropical storm Alex. U.S. crude oil futures fell 0.9 percent at $78.16 a barrel.
(Reporting by Angela Moon; Editing by Padraic Cassidy)
