Sept. 1 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. stock futures pared losses, with contracts on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index little changed, as investors awaited economic data to gauge the outlook for growth.

Futures on the S&P 500 expiring this month lost 0.1 percent to 1,216.30 after tumbling as much as 0.8 percent earlier.

Stocks climbed yesterday, capping the S&P 500’s biggest eight-day gain since 2009, after reports showed that U.S. business activity and factory orders expanded at a faster pace than economists had forecast. The gains helped the S&P 500 trim its August decline to 5.7 percent, still the biggest monthly selloff since May 2010.

The S&P 500 plunged 18 percent from an almost three-year high on April 29 through Aug. 8 as concern grew that the world’s largest economy may relapse into a recession and Europe will fail to contain its debt crisis. The retreat was led by companies whose earnings are most-sensitive to the economy, including financial firms, industrial manufacturers and energy and raw-materials producers.

The index rebounded 8.9 percent from Aug. 8 through yesterday after the plunge dragged its valuation to 12.2 times the reported earnings of its companies, the cheapest level since the bull market began in 2009. Gauges of S&P 500 utilities, commodity producers, health-care companies and financials firms rallied more than 10 percent to lead the recovery, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael P. Regan at mregan12@bloomberg.net