Wall Street stock futures slid on Thursday morning after Standard & Poor’s warned that it may downgrade the UK government’s credit rating.

S&P shocked investors world-wide with a formal warning that the U.K. must get its finances in order or lose its coveted triple-A credit rating.

U.K. stocks dropped and the benchmark FTSE 100 was lower by more than 2% in recent trading.

Germany’s DAX index fell 1.7%, and France’s CAC-40 fell 1.4%.

In Asia, where most markets didn’t get a chance to react to the S&P news, the Nikkei 225 fell 0.9% and the Hang Seng lost 1.6%.

Here at home, wholesale sales in current dollars fell 0.6% to $40.5 billion in March, Statistics Canada said Thursday.

Declining sales in the building materials and machinery and electronic equipment sectors were important factors contributing to this decrease.

Separately, StatsCan said cross-border financial flows strengthened in March, as Canadian investors acquired $6.2 billion of foreign securities and non-residents purchased $6.8 billion of Canadian securities.

The Canadian dollar opened at US87.63¢, down 0.06 of a cent from Wednesday’s close.

In commodities news, light, sweet crude fell US$1.22 to US$60.82 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

South of the border, initial claims for jobless benefits fell 12,000 to a seasonally adjusted 631,000 in the week ended May 16, the U.S. Labor Department said. But the number of continuing claims climbed 75,000 to a record 6,662,000 as the unemployed continue to face a challenging job market.

On Wednesday, strength in energy and commodity stocks helped the Toronto Stock Exchange enjoy another day of strong gains.

The S&P/TSX composite index gained 131.49 points, or 1.3%, to close at 10,232.44.

The junior S&P/TSX Venture composite index also made gains, adding 9.15 points, or 0.9%, to close at 1,085.64.

In New York, a slide in financial stocks pulled the U.S. main indexes into negative territory by day’s end.

A decline in financial stocks helped pull the broader stock market lower after minutes from the last Federal Reserve rate-setting meeting showed the central bank remains worried about the economic outlook.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell from triple digit gains earlier in the day, to end at 8,422.04, down 52.81 points, or 0.6%.

The S&P 500 index shed 4.66 points, or 0.5%, to 903.47.

The Nasdaq composite index declined 6.70 points, or 0.4%, to 1,727.84.

Inflation rate slows in April as energy prices drop (I )

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