US Stock Futures Close Lower Wednesday; Russell 2000 Down 1.25%

The dispersion is the story: small caps fell roughly four to six times harder than the large-cap contracts, a pattern that typically signals risk appetite thinning at the speculative end of the market rather than a broad de-risking. That matters most for smaller, domestically geared companies, which carry more refinancing and earnings sensitivity than mega-cap peers. Whether the Russell 2000 keeps underperforming the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 contracts is the open question to watch.