US pre-open: Wall Street set to gain at start of week

Wall Street was seen starting the week on the front-foot, with investors scurrying to catch-up with gains on overseas markets after the long holiday weekend.

As of 13:01 the Dow Jones ‘mini’ contract was advancing by 211.00 points to 16,124 and the S&P 500 ‘mini’ by another 25.75 points to 1,884.

Energy stocks were set to receive a boost as traders returned to their desks to find that the possibility of an agreement by several of the world’s major crude oil producers to at least freeze oil production wasn’t completely idle market-chatter.

Earlier on Monday, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Venzuela agreed to do just that, provided that other producers did the same.

That was understood to be a veiled reference to Iran, in particular, who just the day before reiterated it was set on regaining the share of the international oil market that it had before international sanctions were imposed on Tehran.

Speaking on 15 February, at the weekly press conference offered by Iran's ministry of foreign affairs, spokesman Hossein Jabari-Ansari said that Iran, “as an important member country of OPEC, will win back its quota in the global crude oil market.”

Recent weakness in the US dollar also appeared to have softened China’s bias towards weakening the yuan over the weekend.

To take note of, on 15 February both JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley told clients they saw scope for a near-term bounce in risk-markets.

Nonetheless, JP Morgan added that "the three key lead indicators of the cycle remain: credit spreads, profit margins and the shape of the yield curve."

"Bigger picture, the key strategy in our view remains to use the rebound as an opportunity to sell."

In the corporate space, Pfizer was making headlines after announcing it would pay $784.6m to settle claims over Medicaid rebates.

As a result, Pfizer’s fourth quarter earnings were revised from $613m to -$172m.

ADT agreed to be acquired by private-equity outfit Apollo Global Management for about $6.93bn.

Stock in Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs was on the move before the ‘opening bell’ after analysts at JP Morgan upgraded the former from ‘neutral’ to ‘overweight’ and the latter from ‘underweight’ to ‘overweight’.

Yields on the benchmark ten-year US Treasury notes were three basis points higher to 1.78%.

Three Fed speakers were due to take to the podium on Tuesday.

It would be a light day in terms of economic data, with just the Empire State manufacturing sector survey and the NAHB's housing market index due for release at 13:30GMT and 15:00GMT, respectively.