Futures jump on report of U.S., China nearing phase-one trade deal

By Shreyashi Sanyal

(Reuters) – U.S. stock index futures shot up on Wednesday, putting Wall Street’s main indexes on course to snap a three-day losing streak, following a report that the United States and China were moving closer to signing a ‘phase-one’ trade deal.

Washington and Beijing are getting close to agreeing on the amount of tariffs to be rolled back, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday, a day after comments from President Donald Trump and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross dampened hopes of a possible near-term agreement.

The comments had pushed all the three major stock indexes further away from last week’s record highs that were fueled by optimism that an interim deal between the two countries was in the works. The S&P 500 index () is now about 2% away from its record high.

The back-and-forth on trade has also made investors wary after the final month of 2018 was the worst December on Wall Street since the Great Depression.

Tariff-exposed semiconductor companies attempted a comeback on Wednesday, with Micron Technology Inc (O:), Nvidia Corp (O:) and Intel Corp (O:) rising between 0.5% and 1.6% in premarket trading.

Market participants also waited for the ADP (NASDAQ:) National Employment report, often considered a precursor to the Labor Department’s more comprehensive non-farm payrolls data, which is expected to show 140,000 jobs were added in November, compared to 125,000 in October.

A reading of the ISM services PMI will also be released later in the day and is expected to be 54.5 in November, compared to 54.7 in October.

At 7:04 a.m. ET, were up 146 points, or 0.53%. S&P 500 e-minis were up 14 points, or 0.45% and were up 49.25 points, or 0.6%.

Among stocks, Google-parent Alphabet Inc (O:) rose 1% as Sundar Pichai took over as CEO after Larry Page and Sergey Brin stepped aside.

Johnson & Johnson (N:) gained 0.9% after it said on Tuesday that recent tests showed that Johnson’s Baby Powder was free of asbestos.

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