U.S. stock futures rose early Monday after a sell-off in tech shares led to the market’s first back-to-back weekly declines in months.
Dow Jones Industrial Average futures added 219 points, or 0.8%. The move implied a gain of more than 170 points at the open. S&P 500 futures were up 1%. Nasdaq-100 futures were up more than 1.4% as tech shares rebounded in premarket trading.
Here’s what investors were watching:
Shares of Apple were higher by 2% in premarket trading. The market has been following in the footsteps of its rally leader. Apple shares are down 13% this month.
Tesla shares rebounded by more than 2% in premarket trading. The once-surging stock is down more than 25% in September after it failed to gain entry into the benchmark S&P 500, something investors were anticipating.
Tech sentiment was lifted by news of Nvidia buying chipmaker Arm Holdings from SoftBank for $40 billion. Nvidia will finance the deal through a combination of cash and common stock. Nvidia was up 6% in premarket trading. Other chipmakers also gained, including AMD, Micron and Skyworks.
AstraZeneca resumed phase three trials for its coronavirus vaccine in the U.K. following a halt for safety concerns.
ByteDance rejected Microsoft’s bid to buy TikTok’s U.S. operations. Instead, ByteDance has chosen Oracle to be TikTok’s U.S. technology partner, and Oracle will take a significant stake in the business, according to a person familiar with the discussions. Oracle shares were up 6% in premarket trading.
Gilead said it will acquire Immunomedics to expand its cancer treatments. It was a $21 billion cash deal. Immunomedics shares doubled in premarket trading. Shares of Immunomedics surged more than 100% in premarket trading Monday. The iShares Nasdaq Biotechnology ETF was up 2% in premarket trading.
The S&P 500 fell by 2.5% last week. It was the broader-market index’s worst one-week drop since June 26. That decline also marked the first time since May that the S&P 500 closed lower in two straight weeks. The benchmark is down 4.6% this month.
Those losses were driven in large part by a steep drop in tech, the best-performing market sector year to date. The S&P 500 tech sector plunged more than 4% for its biggest weekly loss since March.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite was hit the hardest last week, down 4%. That was its worst week since March.
“The excessive technology froth from August has been wiped away, but in its wake, clear and ominous topping patterns like … developed,” said Frank Cappelleri, executive director at Instinet, in a note.
To be sure, Sean Darby of Jefferies thinks this decline in tech could be short-lived.
“There is nothing untoward about the fundamentals nor earnings expectations. An upside surprise would come from further dollar weakness, while the emergence of a vaccine and/or a rise in long-term rates would curb performance,” said Darby, a global equity strategist at the firm.
Investors are coming into the new week amid dwindling hope of lawmakers striking a deal on new fiscal stimulus.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, said on Friday the chances of Republicans and Democrats reaching a deal don’t “look that good right now.” Earlier this month, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Democrats and the White House had “serious differences” over coronavirus aid.
Meanwhile, the number of U.S. coronavirus cases are growing by 5% or more in 11 states, according to a 360APROKO analysis of Johns Hopkins University data. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said last week that recent coronavirus data was “disturbing.”
