Global markets are ripping higher after the French election
Markets Insider
US stock index futures rose sharply on Monday, tracking European and Asian stocks, as investors breathed a sigh of relief after the centrist candidate and market favorite, Emmanuel Macron, won the first round of the French presidential election.
Polls suggest Macron, a pro-European Union candidate, is expected to beat his right-wing rival Marine Le Pen in a deciding vote next month, reducing the chances of France taking a Britain-like shock step to exit the EU.
At 7:35 a.m. ET, Dow futures were up 204 points, or 1%, S&P 500 futures were up 25 points, or 1.09%, and Nasdaq futures were up 55 points, or 1.02%.
While eurozone stocks headed for their best day in two years, gold prices tumbled amid an unwinding of haven trades. Gold traded down by 1.30%, or $16.74 an ounce, to $1,272.26.
US investors are also gearing up for the busiest earnings week in at least a decade, with more than 190 S&P 500 members, including the heavyweights Alphabet and Microsoft, scheduled to report results.
Investors have held on even as tensions in North Korea, the French election, and a flagging "Trump trade" have weighed on sentiment in recent weeks, encouraged by a strong showing in the first-quarter earnings season.
Upbeat earnings so far have increased expectations for profit growth. Overall profit for S&P 500 companies is now estimated to have risen by 11.2% in the first quarter, compared with the 10.1% forecast at the start of the earnings season, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Wall Street closed lower but well off session lows Friday after President Donald Trump said he would have a "big announcement" on tax reforms on Wednesday.
Shares of big US banks, including Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan, rosy by over 2% in premarket trading Monday. The S&P 500 financial sector had been the broader index's biggest underperformer last week as investors favored haven assets amid geopolitical risks.
Hasbro rose by 2.6% after the toymaker reported a better-than-expected quarterly profit. Shares of its rival Mattel were up by nearly 2% on the news.
The medical devices maker C R Bard jumped by 20% to $304 after the US medical equipment supplier Becton Dickinson said it would buy Bard for $24 billion.
(Reuters reporting by Yashaswini Swamynathan in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)