U.S. Futures Edge Higher; Facebook Starts Tech Earnings Season By

By Peter Nurse   

- U.S. stocks are mf foreign exchangeseen opening marginally higher Monday, starting the new week in cautious fashion ahead of the release of earnings reports from several tech giants, including Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) later in the session. 

At 7:05 AM ET (1105 GMT), the Dow Futures contract was up 5 points, or 0.2%, S&P 500 Futures traded 4 points, or 0.1%, higher, while Nasdaq 100 Futures climbed 20 points, or 0.1%.

Four out of the five FAANG stocks are set to report earnings during the week - Facebook after Monday’s close, followed by Google parent Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) on Tuesday, while Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) are due Thursday.

Healthy growth in these heavily-weighted stocks have been behind much of the gains in the broader equities market over the last year, and strong earnings are likely to propel Wall Street even higher.

The major indices are coming off a winning week, with the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average closing Friday at a record level having gained more than 1% last week. The broad-based S&P 500 rallied 1.7% last week, hitting an all-time high Friday, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite rose 0.5%.

Also of interest Monday will be PayPal (NASDAQ:PYPL), after the payments company said over the weekend that it is not currently pursuing an acquisition of Pinterest (NYSE:PINS), responding to reports that it was in talks to buy the digital pinboard site for as much as $45 billion.

The economic data slate is largely empty Monday, but the third-quarter gross domestic product release on Thursday is expected to show growth slowing to 2.8% from 6.7% in the previous three months.

Other data to watch during the week includes reports on durable goods orders on Wednesday, initial jobless claims on Thursday and the core PCE price index on Friday, which will be the last big inflation data point before the Federal Reserve's November meeting next week.

Crude prices pushed higher Monday, climbing to multi-year highs with global supply remaining tight and demand strong as the economic recovery from Covid-19 continues.

Oil prices have also been bolstered by worries about coal and gas shortages in China, India and Europe, which have spurred fuel-switching to diesel and fuel oil in the limited number of places where that is practical.

By 7 AM ET, U.S. crude futures traded 0.9% higher at $84.53 a barrel, just off the highest level since October 2014, while the Brent contract rose 0.7% to $85.27, just off the October 2018 high.

Additionally, gold futures rose 0.3% to $1,801.60/oz, while EUR/USD traded 0.2% lower at 1.1623.

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