Wall Street to rise after two days of losses, data helps

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks were set to climb on Thursday, rebounding after two days of sharp losses on strong labor market data, with a busy day for corporate earnings dictating the moves of some major stocks.

Alibaba Group shares fell 8.3 percent in premarket trading after it posted revenue that missed Wall Street expectations. The decline took shares of Yahoo , which announced the spinoff of its Alibaba stake Wednesday, down 7.3 percent.

Futures had earlier weakened, weighed by earnings, but recovered steeply after weekly applications for unemployment insurance fell to their lowest in almost 15 years, adding to bullish signals on the labor market.

December pending home sales are due at 10:00 a.m.

The S&P 500 dropped on Tuesday and Wednesday, seeing its first back-to-back declines of more than 1 percent since October, dragged by plummeting energy shares after U.S. crude prices dropped to near six-year lows.

"In the early going, you're going to get some of that back," said Kevin Caron, market strategist at Stifel, Nicolaus & Co in Florham Park, New Jersey, of the expected higher open on Wall Street.

He said earnings expectations have been scaled back and companies shouldn't have a problem beating them, but the claims data showed a strengthening economy.

"The trend in jobless claims has been very healthy, steadily improving," Caron said.

S&P 500 e-mini futures were up 5 points and fair value, a formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration on the contract, indicated a slightly higher open. Dow Jones industrial average e-mini futures <1YMc1> rose 54 points and Nasdaq 100 e-mini futures added 1 point.

Coach Inc shares rose 6.4 percent in premarket trading after the handbag maker posted a better-than-expected quarterly profit.

Qualcomm Inc reduced its outlook for fiscal 2015, saying it expects its newest mobile chip will not be used in a major customer's flagship smartphone, sending its shares 6.7 percent lower.

(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

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