U.S. Stocks Futures Gain Marginally, Sentiment Lifted By Monetary Easing in Japan
U.S. stock futures gained a tad on Wednesday after Japan’s central bank announced monetary easing to boost its stalled economy, improving the market sentiment and sparking some rally in Asian equities and crude oil futures even as Japan’s benchmark index Nikkei hit a four months high.
At last check, Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 26 points, or 0.2%, to 13,525; S&P 500 Index futures edged up 2.6 points to 1,455.50, while Nasdaq-100 futures climbed 8 points to 2,858.
Elsewhere in Europe, investors’ sentiment continues to remain cautious as uncertainty with regard to Spain’s bailout still persists. Earlier this week, yields on Spain’s sovereign bonds rose as Madrid seemed to be no urgency to ask for EU help. Until, Spain’s officially ask for help, the ECB will not start buying short term bonds.
Moving onto U.S. economic news front, a data on housing starts for August is due at 8:30 a.m. Eastern and existing home sales data for the same month is scheduled to be released at 10 a.m. Eastern.
On Earnings front, companies expected to report quarterly results include: AutoZone Inc. (NYSE: AZO), General Mills Inc. (NYSE: GIS), and Adobe Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: ADBE).
In some corporate news, Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) increased its quarterly dividends by 15 percent to 23 cents from 20 cents on Tuesday.
According to report published in Reuters, three people familiar with the development said that Blackstone Group LP was all set to buy home security provider Vivint, in a deal estimated at $2 billion.
In some other markets, Nymex crude-oil futures gained 42 cents to trade at $95.71 a barrel. Gold futures for December contract were almost flat $1,771.90.
The dollar index DXY – a gauge on U.S. dollar’s performance against a basket of six most traded currencies–fell 0.1% to 79.144.
On Tuesday markets ended mixed with Dow Jones Industrial average gaining 0.09% while S&P 500 Index sliding 0.13%.
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Post Written By: Ed Liston
Ed Liston is a senior contributing editor at TheStockMarketWatch.com. An active market watcher and investor, Ed guides an independent team of experienced analysts and writes for multiple stock trader publications. He is widely quoted in various financial publications on the Internet. When Ed is not writing about stocks, investing in stocks, talking about stocks, or otherwise doing something stock related, he likes to go sailing and fishing in his yacht.
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