US STOCKS-Banks, travel stocks set to lead Wall Street higher

* Airlines, cruise operators, banks lead premarket gains
* China industrial profits rise for fourth straight month
* Devon Energy, WPX Energy jump after agreeing to merger
deal
* Futures up: Dow 1.38%, S&P 1.44%, Nasdaq 1.92%

(Adds comment, updates prices throughout)
By Devik Jain and Shreyashi Sanyal
Sept 28 (Reuters) - Wall Street was set to surge at the open
on Monday following the longest weekly losing streak in a year
for the S&P 500 and the Dow, with investors piling into shares
of beaten-down sectors, including banks and travel.
Delta Air Lines DAL.N , United Airlines UAL.O , American
Airlines Group Inc AAL.O rose between 2% and 4% in premarket
trading, while cruise operators Norwegian Cruise Line NCLH.N ,
Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd RCL.N and Carnival Corp CCL.N
gained more than 3.5% each.
American Airlines Group Inc AAL.O said on Friday it had
secured a $5.5 billion Treasury loan and could tap up to $2
billion more in October depending on the allocation of extra
funds under a $25 billion loan package for airlines.
Worries over rising coronavirus cases and waning hopes of
more fiscal stimulus have led to a spike in market volatility in
the past few weeks, and analysts expect trading to remain choppy
in the run up to the Nov. 3 presidential election.
Wall Street's main indexes ended higher on Friday, helped by
technology stocks, but the Dow Jones .DJI and the benchmark
S&P 500 .SPX indexes posted their fourth straight weekly
decline - the longest such streak since August 2019.
U.S. big banks JPMorgan Chase & Co JPM.N , Goldman Sachs
Group Inc GS.N , Morgan Stanley MS.N , Wells Fargo & Co
WFC.N and Bank of America Corp BAC.N and Citigroup Inc C.N
added between 1.0% and 1.9%. US/
"Traders tend to gravitate toward those groups that are most
oversold because they have the greatest upside potential," said
Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA in New York,
referring to banks and travel-related stocks.
Optimism spilled over from Asian trading hours after data
over the weekend showed profits at China's industrial firms grew
for the fourth straight month in August. "All of this data reminds investors that we're not headed
for a new bear market or a new recession," Stovall said.
At 8:37 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis 1YMcv1 were up 372 points, or
1.38%, S&P 500 e-minis EScv1 were up 47.5 points, or 1.44%,
and Nasdaq 100 e-minis NQcv1 were up 213.5 points, or 1.92%.
Shares of technology-related stocks including Facebook Inc
FB.O , Alphabet Inc GOOGL.O , Amazon.com Inc AMZN.O , Apple
Inc AAPL.O and Netflix Inc NFLX.O , seen as relatively safe
assets during economic uncertainty, rose between 1.8% and 2.7%.
Boeing BA.N shares rose 3.5% after the FAA Chief Steve
Dickson said the agency is set to conduct a 737 MAX evaluation
flight this week, a key milestone as the planemaker aims for
approval to resume flight. Devon Energy Corp DVN.N jumped 12.2% after the oil and gas
producer said it will buy peer WPX Energy Inc WPX.N for $2.56
billion. WPX Energy shares surged 13.5%. Shares of chip gear makers KLA Corp KLAC.O tumbled 2.5%,
while Lam Research Corp LRCX.O and Applied Materials Inc
AMAT.O fell more than 1% as the United States imposed curbs on
exports to China's biggest chip maker SMIC 0981.HK , citing
risk of military use.