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* Futures up: Dow 0.11%, S&P 500 0.21%, Nasdaq 0.27%
By Shreyashi Sanyal
Oct 21 (Reuters) - Wall Street looked set to start the week
on an upbeat note on Monday, as investors hoped for progress in
resolving the U.S.-China trade war, but a fall in Boeing's
shares kept a lid on early gains.
Chinese Vice Premier Liu He said on Saturday that Beijing
would work with Washington to address core concerns, adding to
optimism from President Donald Trump's comments on Friday that
he expected a trade deal to be signed by mid-November.
Microsoft Corp MSFT.O rose 0.8% in premarket trading after
German business software group SAP SAPG.DE said it had signed
a three-year cloud partnership with the company. However, Boeing Co BA.N was set to extend a slide from the
previous session as two brokerages downgraded the stock after
leaked messages from a former test pilot showed he might have
unintentionally misled regulators about the safety of the
grounded 737 MAX jet. Shares of the planemaker fell nearly 2%.
Wall Street has been steadily recovering after a rough start
to the month on signs of progress in talks between the world's
two largest economies.
The benchmark S&P 500 .SPX index ended Friday with its
second weekly gain, while the Nasdaq .IXIC rose for three
weeks in a row.
At 7:19 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis 1YMcv1 were up 29 points, or
0.11%. S&P 500 e-minis EScv1 were up 6.25 points, or 0.21% and
Nasdaq 100 e-minis NQcv1 were up 21 points, or 0.27%.
Investors are now gearing up for another batch of reports
after a strong start to the third-quarter earnings season last
week, with big technology companies including Microsoft Corp
MSFT.O and Intel Corp INTC.O set to report their earnings
this week.
Analysts project S&P 500 earnings dropping 3.1%, compared
with a year earlier, marking the first contraction since 2016,
according to Refinitiv data.
But of the 73 companies that have reported results so far,
nearly 84% have topped analysts' estimates.
Oilfield services provider Halliburton Co HAL.N dipped
0.4% after reporting a 32% slump in third-quarter profit, hit by
a slowdown in shale drilling in North America, its biggest
market. Drug distributors Cardinal Health Inc CAH.N fell 3% and
McKesson Corp MCK.N slipped 4.1%, ahead of a trial over the
U.S. opioid epidemic after drug companies and local governments
failed to reach a settlement on Friday.