Futures rise on upbeat earnings as data eyed
Upbeat corporate results from both sides of the Atlantic lifted U.S. stock index futures on Tuesday, setting up Wall Street for a fourth straight day of gains.
* Dow component DuPont and Co's
* DuPont rose more than 3 percent in premarket trading, while U.S.-traded shares of UBS jumped 7.3 percent, and Deutsche Bank gained 2.8 percent.
* Strong global earnings numbers are continuing to drive this recent equity rally, said Andre Bakhos, director of market analytics at Lek Securities in New York.
In addition, you've had a host of positive economic numbers adding to a global recovery picture, and investors are taking note.
* S&P 500 futures rose 6.2 points and were above fair value, a formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration on the contract. Dow Jones industrial average futures gained 43 points, and Nasdaq 100 futures added 9.25 points.
* S&P futures traded above their 200-day moving average for the first time in more than a month, tracking the S&P 500 <.SPX> on Monday. Other technical analysis, including the moving average convergence-divergence and momentum, continue to show bullish signals for the three top stock indexes.
* Since that moving average signifies the long-term trend it is usually taken that all is well, and that we are back on track from the longer-term horizon, Bakhos said. Even non-technically oriented market participants have some respect for the 200-day moving average.
* Oil giant BP Plc plans to offset the entire cost of its Gulf of Mexico oil spill against its tax bill, possibly reducing future contributions to U.S. tax coffers by almost $10 billion. BP took a pretax provision of $32.2 billion for the second quarter, triggering a $17 billion loss. It also named American Bob Dudley as its next chief executive, replacing Tony Hayward, as expected.
* Economic data on tap for Tuesday includes the May reading of S&P/Case-Shiller home price index, expected to be up 4 percent, compared with April's increase of 3.8 percent, according to a Reuters survey.
* The Conference Board's consumer confidence index for July is expected to have fallen to 51.0 from 52.9. The data will be watched more closely than usual because of the slump in the University of Michigan sentiment survey 10 days earlier.
* An upbeat outlook from FedEx Corp , coupled with encouraging home sales, lifted U.S. stocks on Monday.
* The Standard & Poor's 500 rose 1.1 percent, closing above the 1,100 level for the second straight day, representing the top of a trading range it had failed to break several times in the past month.
(Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)
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