Stocks were set to open higher on Monday, feeding on acquisition news and brushing off weak manufacturing data after last week's wild swings took the S&P 500 near a one-year low.

Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc jumped nearly 60 percent to $38.73 in premarket trading on Google Inc's offer to buy the company for about $12.5 billion in cash. Google fell 2.8 percent to $547.25, capping gains in Nasdaq futures.

Adding to a recent string of soft economic data, a gauge of New York State manufacturing contracted for the third month in a row in August as new orders fell to their lowest level since November 2010.

The recent market declines that last week took the S&P 500 to its lowest since September reflected weak U.S. and global economic data as well as a perception that leaders in Europe and the United States were running out of options to help their sputtering economies.

But some analysts saw the selling as overdone, and stocks closed the week with a two-day rally. A relative drop in volume last Friday and lighter intraday swings suggested a decline in investor anxiety.

This is an extremely jittery market, just looking to avoid significant bad news, said Rick Meckler, president of investment firm LibertyView Capital Management in New York. I would expect there to be less volatility than we saw last week.

S&P 500 futures rose 7.5 points and were above fair value, a formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration of the contract. Dow Jones industrial average futures gained 57 points, and Nasdaq 100 futures edged up 0.25 points.

Japan's economy shrank less than anticipated in the second quarter as companies made strides in restoring output following a devastating earthquake and tsunami, data showed. That boosted Asian equities, with the Nikkei closing up 1.4 percent.

The Japanese news, while not overly encouraging, was another datapoint showing things are not nearly as bad as the (recent stocks) selloff seemed to suggest, LibertyView Capital's Meckler said.

European shares edged lower, with investors focused on Tuesday's meeting between France and Germany to deal with the current financial crisis in the region.

On the earnings front, Lowe's Cos Inc shares fell 3.1 percent to $18.90 premarket after it reported weaker-than-expected quarterly sales and cut its fiscal-year outlook.

Bank of America Corp will exit the international credit card businesses and sell its Canada business to TD Bank Group. The U.S. lender's shares gained 3.3 percent to $7.43 premarket.

(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)

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