U.S. stock index futures rose on Monday, pointing to an equities rebound after the S&P's worst weekly performance so far this year, as investors looked ahead to data on February pending home sales.

The benchmark S&P 500 index fell 0.5 percent last week, a relatively minor decline that was still the biggest weekly slide since the final week of December.

Rising optimism about economic growth has kept investors piling into equities, a trend that looked set to continue with the S&P 500 near its highest point since May 2008. The Nasdaq has risen for six straight weeks.

There's a lot of optimism in the market, and the longer-term trend is up, said Cort Gwon, chief strategist at HudsonView Capital Management in New York. After a quiet weekend we'll probably just feed off the past few weeks, which were largely very positive.

Crude oil prices fell 0.1 percent, though they remained up almost 8 percent for the year on worries about supply disruptions from the Middle East. Rising prices are viewed as a headwind for the economy.

S&P 500 futures rose 4.9 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 added 47 points, and Nasdaq 100 futures rose 14.5 points.

The S&P 500 has been finding strong support at its 14-day moving average, near 1,386. The index closed at 1,397.11 on Friday.

Pending home sales are seen rising 1 percent in February after a 2-percent increase in January. Data on the housing market continues to be weak, with the government reporting last week that new home sales fell 1.6 percent. The pending home sales data will be released at 10 a.m. (1400 GMT).

Lions Gate Entertainment Corp rallied 8.9 percent to $15.83 in premarket trading after the strong opening to its film The Hunger Games, which made $214 million over the weekend globally.

Cal-Maine Foods Inc reported third-quarter earnings that fell from the prior year on rising feed costs, which the company sees persisting through the summer. Apollo Group Inc is scheduled to report later Monday.

BATS Global Markets Inc on Sunday apologized for a system failure that caused its own shares to erroneously trade for less than a penny on Friday and resulted in Apple Inc's shares being temporarily halted.

Chief Executive Joe Ratterman called the incident a devastating moment, and said the company's withdrawn initial public offering was on hold for the foreseeable future.

U.S. stocks rose in light volume on Friday, buoyed by rising energy and basic materials shares.

(Editing by Padraic Cassidy)