Wall St eyes higher open as investors await Fed rate verdict, more earnings
By Amruta Khandekar and Shashwat Chauhan
(Reuters) — Wall Street was poised for a higher open on Monday ahead of a busy week of earnings and interest rate decisions from major central banks including the Federal Reserve, while investors shrugged off concerns about the Middle East conflict.
Israeli troops and tanks attacked Gaza's main northern city from the east and west on Monday, three days after it began ground operations in the Palestinian enclave.
However, the clashes had little impact on U.S. equity markets, with megacap names such as Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA), Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) up between 0.9% and 1.1% in premarket trading.
«On Friday going into this ground offensive, investors were really risk averse. So now because the offensive is not as big as everyone expected, on the margin this is good news for markets,» said Anthi Tsouvali, multi-asset strategist at State Street (NYSE:STT) Global Markets.
Geopolitical concerns as well as a surge in Treasury yields have weighed on U.S. equities this month, dragging the benchmark S&P 500 down over 10% from its intraday high in July.
On Monday, the yield on the ten-year note was at 4.90% after having breached the 5% level earlier this month.
Adding to bond market worries, the U.S. Treasury is likely to boost the size of auctions for bills, notes, and bonds in the fourth quarter when it announces its financing plans this week to fund a worsening budget deficit. A subsequent rise in yields may further pressure stocks.
The Fed is widely expected to keep interest rates unchanged at the end of its policy meeting on Nov. 1, according to the CME Group's (NASDAQ:CME) FedWatch tool.
However, certain parts of the economy have proved to be resilient, spurring
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