LDN - Business

Wall Street set to open higher in cautious trading

[December 20, 2016] By Tanya Agrawal

(Reuters) - Wall Street looked set to open higher on Tuesday as investors appeared to have shrugged off the potential impact from increased political tensions following Monday's deadly attacks in Turkey and Germany.

Investors also held off from making big bets in the last full week of trading before the holidays.

Wall Street extended a recent rally on Monday but finished the session short of earlier highs as risk aversion set in following the killing of Russian ambassador to Turkey in Ankara and a truck attack in Germany.

"2016 is ending with tragic incidents in Turkey and Germany, but investors have become so fast in digesting bad news, and this explains the resilience in financial markets," said Hussein Sayed, chief market strategist at FXTM.

U.S. stocks have been on a tear since the Nov. 8 presidential election, with the S&P rising nearly 6 percent on bets that President-elect Donald Trump's plans for deregulation and infrastructure spending will boost the economy.

The Dow Jones industrial average is less than 1 percent away from 20,000, a level it has never breached.

"We're looking at a higher opening today but the lack of any major economic news and the fact that market shrugged off Monday's events means stocks will drift in an upwards trend," said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at First Standard Financial in New York.

Dow e-minis <1YMc1> were up 56 points, or 0.28 percent, with 16,923 contracts changing hands at 8:27 a.m. ET (1327 GMT).

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S&P 500 e-minis <ESc1> were up 6.25 points, or 0.28 percent, with 72,954 contracts traded.

Nasdaq 100 e-minis <NQc1> were up 11.75 points, or 0.24 percent, on volume of 13,702 contracts.

Oil prices edged higher on forecasts of a steep draw in U.S. crude oil stocks that could indicate a global oversupply is starting to shrink. [O/R]

The dollar index <.DXY> bounced back towards 14-year highs, a day after Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said the U.S. labor market had improved to its strongest in almost a decade, suggesting wage growth is picking up.

General Mills <GIS.N> fell 3.6 percent to $60.80 after the Cheerios cereal-maker's quarterly results missed expectations.

BlackBerry <BBRY.O> rose 3.1 percent to $7.95 after the Canadian smartphone maker's adjusted profit beat analysts' estimates.

Nvidia <NVDA.O> was up 2.7 percent at $104.47 after brokerages Goldman Sachs and Mizuho raised their price targets on the chipmaker's stock.

Advanced Micro Devices <AMD.O> was up 2 percent at $11.20 after Mizuho raised upgraded the stock to "buy".

(Reporting by Tanya Agrawal in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva and Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)

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