US pre-open: Stocks seen touch higher as oil prices rally

US futures pointed to a marginally higher open on Wall Street, supported by rallying oil prices, as investors eyed a speech by Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer.

At 1120 GMT, Dow Jones Industrial Average futures were flat, while S&P 500 and Nasdaq futures were 0.2% firmer.

At the same time, oil prices rose amid growing expectations that OPEC will agree a production cut at its meeting later this week. West Texas Intermediate was up 1.7% to $46.45 a barrel and Brent crude was 1.7% higher at $47.64.

In currency markets, the dollar was fairly steady against the pound and the yen, but down 0.5% against the euro.

Remo Fritschi, institutional sales manager at ADS Securities London, said: “It’s certainly a quiet start to the week in terms of the fundamentals and this is being reflected in the lacklustre open we’re currently looking at for Wall Street. There’s a general theme building that the post-election battering suffered by some emerging markets may now be looking overdone, although at least as far as the futures markets indicate, there’s no real indication that the gap will be plugged by US outflows – although this will be worth watching in the coming hours to see if sentiment starts to change.

“Confidence over the outcome of next week’s OPEC summit in Vienna is serving to support crude oil prices and again this is likely to benefit the major US indices, whilst it’s worth noting that volumes may be a little depressed in the coming days as markets prepare for the Thanksgiving break.”

In corporate news, shares in identity theft protection services company LifeLock surged in pre-market trade after Symantec Corp agreed to buy it for $24 per share or $2.3bn in enterprise value.

Headwaters also rose sharply in pre-market trade as Australia’s Boral signed a $1.86bn deal to buy the US building products company.

Elsewhere, Facebook was likely to be in focus following reports it will hire an additional 500 employees in the UK.

Tyson Foods was slated to report earnings before the opening bell.

With no major US data releases due, investors will eye a speech by Fed Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer on the longer-term economic challenges facing the US in New York at 1300 GMT.

Stock markets will be closed for Thanksgiving on Thursday.