Futures jump as China signals progress in trade talks

By Arjun Panchadar

(Reuters) – U.S. stock index futures jumped on Thursday as signs of a U.S.-China trade truce and a fresh batch of earnings reports looked set to restart a rally that has led Wall Street to record highs.

The benchmark S&P 500 index is eyeing its fifth straight week of increases, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq is set to log six weeks of gains.

China said on Thursday that it had agreed with the United States to remove tariffs in phases, while the state-owned Xinhua News Agency said Beijing was also considering removing restrictions on poultry imports.

Trade-sensitive industrials 3M Co (N:) and Caterpillar Inc (N:) rose nearly 1% in premarket trading. Chipmakers with sizeable exposure to China, including Intel Corp (O:), Micron Technology (O:) and Nvidia Corp (O:), were up between 1.7% and 2%.

Also supporting tech stocks was a 6.1% gain in Qualcomm Inc shares (O:) after the chipmaker forecast current-quarter profit above analysts’ estimates.

At 7:22 a.m. ET, were up 131 points, or 0.48%. S&P 500 e-minis were up 10.75 points, or 0.35% and were up 35.75 points, or 0.44%.

Expedia Group Inc (O:) dropped 13.2% as the online travel booking company missed quarterly profit estimates.

Roku Inc (O:) plunged 14.5% after posting a wider net loss in the third quarter, as it spent more to attract subscribers to its video streaming platform.

Twitter Inc (N:) fell 1.4% after Evercore ISI downgraded the stock to “underperform” from “in-line”.

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