Wall St. set to open higher on Goldman, Netflix results

[October 18, 2016]  By Yashaswini Swamynathan

(Reuters) - Wall Street was set for a higher open on Tuesday, buoyed by a slew of better-than-expected quarterly reports, including from Netflix and Goldman Sachs.

Shares of Netflix surged 18 percent to $117.86 in heavy premarket trading after the video streaming website added many more subscribers in the third quarter than expected.

Goldman <GS.N> rose 1.2 percent and lifted shares of other banks after the company's third-quarter results blew past Wall Street estimates as it raked in higher trading revenue.

A slew of better-than-expected earnings, including from big U.S. banks, in recent days have led analysts to narrow their estimate for the drop in third-quarter profit at S&P 500 companies to 0.1 percent from their earlier view of 0.7 percent.

Of the 37 S&P 500 companies that have reported results until Monday, 78 percent have reported earnings that have topped analysts average estimate, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

"The markets are expecting an inflection point as we move from the third to the fourth quarter, and so what they will be parsing in management guidance is for view that earnings turn positive in the fourth quarter," said David Donabedian, chief investment officer of Atlantic Trust Private Wealth Management.

Dow e-minis were up 98 points, or 0.54 percent at 8:34 a.m. ET (1234 GMT), with 27,999 contracts changing hands.

S&P 500 e-minis were up 14.5 points, or 0.68 percent, with 155,654 contracts traded.

Nasdaq 100 e-minis  were up 37.25 points, or 0.78 percent, on volume of 31,213 contracts.

A report from the Labor Department showed consumer prices rose 0.3 percent in September, after rising 0.2 percent the previous month, due to strong gains in gasoline and rents.

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) shortly after the opening bell in New York, U.S., October 17, 2016. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

The dollar fell from the seven-month high it held for the past five days after Federal Reserve Vice Chair Stanley Fischer said Monday that the U.S. economy was very close to its employment and inflation goals, but warned on any rash changes to monetary policy.

IBM fell 2.6 percent after reporting its 18th straight quarter of revenue decline, attracting a flurry of price target cuts from brokerages.

Intel, scheduled to report after markets close, rose 1.6 percent on a Barclays upgrade. Yahoo, also due to report in the evening, was up 0.7 percent.

Johnson & Johnson  was down 0.24 percent, while Pfizer gained 0.95 percent on Pfizer's plan to ship a cheaper biosimilar to Remicade, JNJ's top selling product. The news overshadowed J&J's slight earnings beat.

(Reporting by Yashaswini Swamynathan in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D'Souza)

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