By Sruthi Shankar
REUTERS - Declines in the shares of a handful of semiconductor producers countered gains for retail giants on Cyber Monday, setting the Nasdaq on course for a lower open and flattening the overall mood on Wall Street.
Hard-drive maker Western Digital slipped nearly 4 percent after Morgan Stanley downgraded its stock to "equal-weight", citing deteriorating prices for some products and uncertainty over a joint venture with Toshiba Memory.
The decline came after South Korea's main KOSPI index fell 1.4 percent following an analyst's report suggesting the memory chip "super cycle" would soon fade.
U.S. memory chip maker Micron Technology fell 3 percent in pre-market, while Broadcom, Marvell Technology and Intel were all set to dip around 0.7 percent at the open.
Shares in Amazon, Target, Wal-Mart and Macy's by contrast all rose on the busiest day of the year for internet shopping, adding to gains for retail stocks on Friday.
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"We're looking at a mixed bag," said Scott Brown, chief economist at Raymond James in St. Petersburg, Florida.
"The market is looking at rest of the world and seeing it's a little bit soft, while the early read on holiday sales has been pretty good. So on the consumer side that's looking good."
Adobe said Cyber Monday is expected to drive $6.6 billion in internet sales, which would make it the largest U.S. online shopping day in history.
At 8:24 a.m. ET (1324 GMT), Dow e-minis were up 4 points, or 0.02 percent, with 25,043 contracts changing hands.
S&P 500 e-minis flat, with 164,558 contracts traded.
Nasdaq 100 e-minis fell 5.75 points, or 0.09 percent, on volume of 32,090 contracts.
Technology stocks led the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq to record high closes on Black Friday.
By far the biggest single traded stock in pre-market was Time Inc, up 9 percent after media company Meredith said it would buy the publisher of People, Sports Illustrated and Fortune magazines in a $1.84 billion deal.
Meredith also rose nearly 5 percent.
Data on Monday is expected to show sales of new U.S. single-family homes fell 6.3 percent to 625,000 units in October. The report is the first of a raft of data this week ranging from gross domestic product numbers, inflation, manufacturing and automobile sales.
Federal Reserve Bank of New York President William Dudley and his Minneapolis counterpart Neel Kashkari are expected to make appearances later in the day with markets now firmly pricing in a rise in official interest rates next month.
Oil prices slipped, with U.S. crude easing from two-year highs on expectations of increased output.
(Reporting by Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru; Editing by Patrick Graham)