(For a live blog on the U.S. stock market, click LIVE/ or
type LIVE/ in a news window)
* Futures up: Dow 0.53%, S&P 500 0.45%, Nasdaq 0.60%
By Shreyashi Sanyal
Dec 4 (Reuters) - U.S. stock index futures shot up on
Wednesday, putting Wall Street's main indexes on course to snap
a three-day losing streak, following a report that the United
States and China were moving closer to signing a 'phase-one'
trade deal.
Washington and Beijing are getting close to agreeing on the
amount of tariffs to be rolled back, Bloomberg reported on
Wednesday, a day after comments from President Donald Trump and
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross dampened hopes of a possible
near-term agreement. The comments had pushed all the three major stock indexes
further away from last week's record highs that were fueled by
optimism that an interim deal between the two countries was in
the works. The S&P 500 index .SPX is now about 2% away from
its record high.
The back-and-forth on trade has also made investors wary
after the final month of 2018 was the worst December on Wall
Street since the Great Depression. Tariff-exposed semiconductor companies attempted a comeback
on Wednesday, with Micron Technology Inc MU.O , Nvidia Corp
NVDA.O and Intel Corp INTC.O rising between 0.5% and 1.6% in
premarket trading.
Market participants also waited for the ADP National
Employment report, often considered a precursor to the Labor
Department's more comprehensive non-farm payrolls data, which is
expected to show 140,000 jobs were added in November, compared
to 125,000 in October.
A reading of the ISM services PMI will also be released
later in the day and is expected to be 54.5 in November,
compared to 54.7 in October.
At 7:04 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis 1YMcv1 were up 146 points, or
0.53%. S&P 500 e-minis EScv1 were up 14 points, or 0.45% and
Nasdaq 100 e-minis NQcv1 were up 49.25 points, or 0.6%.
Among stocks, Google-parent Alphabet Inc GOOGL.O rose 1%
as Sundar Pichai took over as CEO after Larry Page and Sergey
Brin stepped aside. Johnson & Johnson JNJ.N gained 0.9% after it said on
Tuesday that recent tests showed that Johnson's Baby Powder was
free of asbestos.