Credit: REUTERS/CARLO ALLEGRIBy Shreyashi Sanyal and Devik Jain
Sept 22 (Reuters) - The S&P 500 and Nasdaq indexes were set to open higher on Tuesday, with beaten-down shares of technology-related companies leading early gains, while Dow futures were subdued on uncertainty over more U.S. fiscal stimulus.
All three of Wall Street's main indexes started the week on the back foot as fears about a new round of lockdowns in Europe and a stalemate in Congress over the size and shape of another coronavirus-response bill dented hopes of a swift economic recovery.
The blue-chip Dow .DJI closed Monday with its worst session in two weeks, while the benchmark S&P 500 .SPX ended just under 9% down from its record high on Sept. 2, floating above correction territory.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq .IXIC was largely unchanged, while declines were mostly in value-oriented sectors such as industrials .SPLRCI, energy .SPNY and financials .SPSY.
"Today is sort of a reassessment day when investors are going to assess whether this pullback has further to go on the downside," said Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA in New York.
Investors are now bracing for an extended period of market volatility on concerns over growing political uncertainty in Washington, which have been sharpened by the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
"Between now and the (Nov. 3 presidential) election there will be a lot of uncertainty. You will see a lot of volatility, a lot of short-term trades," Stovall said.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Tuesday will make the first of three appearances on Capitol Hill this week to address lawmakers' questions and concerns about the raft of emergency measures the central bank has taken to help support the economy during the pandemic.
At 9:04 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis 1YMcv1 were down 13 points, or 0.05%. S&P 500 e-minis EScv1 were up 5.5 points, or 0.17% and Nasdaq 100 e-minis NQcv1 were up 66.75 points, or 0.61%.
Early premarket gainers included Microsoft Corp MSFT.O, Apple Inc AAPL.O, Amazon.com Inc AMZN.O, Alphabet Inc GOOGL.O and Facebook Inc FB.O, all of which have fuelled a Wall Street rally since a coronavirus-driven crash in March.
Tesla Inc TSLA.O fell 4.5% after Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk warned about the difficulties of speeding up production as an expert cautioned the carmaker's increased reliance on large-scale aluminium parts could bring new manufacturing challenges.
Autozone Inc AZO.N rose 3.7% after the auto parts retailer reported better-than-expected sales and profit for the fourth quarter.
Oracle Corp ORCL.N fell 1.3% on report that Beijing was unlikely to approve a proposed deal by the software maker and Walmart WMT.N for ByteDance's TikTok.
(Reporting by Shreyashi Sanyal and Devik Jain in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva)
((Shreyashi.Sanyal@thomsonreuters.com; +1 646 223 8780; +91 961 144 3740; Twitter: https://twitter.com/s_shreyashi;))
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