Futures edge higher as focus turns to earnings season

[January 12, 2021]  By Devik Jain

(Reuters) - U.S. stock index futures resumed their climb on Tuesday as investors looked to the earnings season this week for clues on the health of Corporate America and the economy while awaiting details on the next package of official economic stimulus.

The front facade of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) is seen in New York, U.S., November 24, 2020. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

Wall Street's main indexes ended off all-time highs on Monday as investors worried that attempts to impeach President Donald Trump could delay the Joe Biden administration's first moves on stimulus, spurring some profit-taking on the past month's gains.

Democrats will give Trump one last chance on Tuesday to leave office days before his term expires or face an unprecedented second impeachment over his supporters' storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

Fourth-quarter earnings will take center-stage starting on Friday, with results from JPMorgan, Citigroup and other big banks launching the reporting season.

Earnings for S&P 500 companies are expected to have dropped 9.8% year-over-year in the final quarter of 2020, according to IBES data from Refinitiv, but they are expected to rebound in 2021, with a gain of 16.4% projected for the first quarter.

At 6:53 a.m. ET, Dow E-minis were up 66 points, or 0.21% and S&P 500 E-minis were up 9 points, or 0.24%. Nasdaq 100 E-minis were up 39.5 points, or 0.31%.

Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo rose between 0.6% and 1.4% in premarket trading on the back of a rise in U.S. Treasury yields. [US/]

Hopes of a big boost to public spending and speedy rollout of vaccines under a Democratic-led U.S. Congress have pushed Wall Street to record highs, with growth-linked financial, industrial and energy stocks leading the market higher.

However, investors are weighing how much further the rally in so-called value stocks can run, after a year in which they have trailed behind technology and other "stay-at-home" winners from the coronavirus crisis.

Intel Corp rose 1.1% after sources said the chipmaker plans to tap Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co to make a second generation discrete graphics chip for personal computers that it hopes will help it combat the rise of Nvidia Corp.

U.S.-listed shares of Tencent Music Entertainment Group jumped 7.7% after a report said the Chinese music platform is in talks with banks for a secondary Hong Kong listing as it seeks to raise up to $3.5 billion.

(Reporting by Devik Jain and Medha Singh in Bengaluru; editing by Patrick Graham and Maju Samuel)

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