By Peter Nurse
Investing.com - U.S. stocks are seen opening higher Monday, rebounding after a difficult week and ahead of the key Federal Reserve event, where the central bank could hint at the prospects for withdrawing its extraordinary monetary stimulus.
At 7:05 AM ET (1105 GMT), the Dow Futures contract was up 145 points, or 0.4%, S&P 500 Futures traded 14 points, or 0.3%, higher, while Nasdaq 100 Futures climbed 40 points, or 0.3%.
The major indices suffered last week, with the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average falling 1.1%, the broad-based S&P 500 declined 0.6%, breaking a two-week winning streak, while the tech-heavy NASDAQ Composite fell 0.7%.
Weighing on sentiment have been concerns the Fed could begin reducing its bond buying as soon as this year, even as the economic recovery is hindered by the surge in new Covid-19 cases linked to the highly contagious delta variant.
With this in mind, the Federal Reserve’s Jackson Hole symposium, starting on Thursday and held online this year, will hang over the market for much of the week. The main event will be the keynote speech by Fed Chair Jerome Powell, scheduled for 10 AM ET (1400 GMT) on Friday, which is likely to provide the market with hints as to what September’s policy meeting will bring.
The main averages remain not far off record levels, supported by a stellar earnings season - of the 476 S&P 500 companies which have posted results, 87.4% have beaten consensus, according to Refinitiv data.
Additionally, global dividends are forecast to rise to $1.39 trillion this year, according to a report from Janus Henderson published Monday, up 2.2 percentage points from its previous report, and just 3% below the pre-pandemic peak.
There are still a few companies left to report, including JD (NASDAQ:JD).com, Palo Alto Networks (NYSE:PANW) and Madison Square Garden (NYSE:MSGS) Monday, while the likes of Uber (NYSE:UBER), Lyft (NASDAQ:LYFT) and DoorDash (NYSE:DASH) will be in the spotlight after a judge in California declared unconstitutional a ballot outcome that meant drivers for the companies could be regarded as independent contractors.
The economic data slate includes figures on existing home sales for July as well as August manufacturing and services PMI data.
Elsewhere, oil prices traded higher Monday, rebounding from three-month lows amid some bargain hunting, helped by the news that China, the world’s largest importer, had no new Covid-19 cases for the first time in August.
By 7:05 AM ET, U.S. crude futures traded 3.1% higher at $64.06 a barrel, while the Brent contract rose 3.3% to $66.91. Both contracts had been on a seven-day losing streak and had hit their lowest levels since May 21 earlier in the session.
Additionally, gold futures rose 0.5% to $1,792.65/oz, while EUR/USD traded 0.1% higher at 1.1710.