Futures rebound more than 1% with focus on White House race

[November 02, 2020]    By Medha Singh

(Reuters) - U.S. stock index futures bounced on Monday after Wall Street recorded its steepest weekly loss since March as investors geared up for an event-packed week starting with the U.S. presidential election.

Market participants anticipate short-term trading turmoil and major long-term policy shifts related to taxes, government spending, trade and regulation depending on whether President Donald Trump or his Democratic challenger Joe Biden wins the White House race.

Biden is ahead in national opinion polls, but races are tight in battleground states that could tip the election to Trump. Analysts said the outcome most likely to shake markets in the near term would be no immediate outcome at all on Tuesday night.

The S&P 500 ended a turbulent week at near six-week lows on Friday as results from technology mega-caps failed to impress and surging coronavirus cases in the United States and Europe as well as fears of a contested U.S. election dampened risk appetite.

Focus this week will also be on the Federal Reserve's two-day policy meeting, the monthly jobs report and earnings from about a quarter of the S&P 500 companies, including chipmaker Qualcomm, carmaker General Motors and insurer American International Group Inc.

At 06:30 a.m. ET, Dow E-minis were up 477 points, or 1.81% and S&P E-minis rose 55.5 points or 1.55%. Nasdaq 100 E-minis were up 135.25 points, or 1.23%

Apple Inc, Facebook Inc and Amazon.com Inc rose between 1% and 1.7% in premarket trading after falling sharply in the previous session.

(Reporting by Medha Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva)

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