By Peter Nurse
Investing.com - U.S. stocks are set to edge higher Tuesday, continuing the recent tech-led gains, amid optimism as the country heads back to work.
At 06:55 AM ET (1055 GMT), S&P 500 Futures traded 4 points, or 0.2%, higher, Nasdaq Futures up 18 points, or 0.2%. The Dow futures contract rose 53 points, also a gain of 0.2%.
It’s the Nasdaq index, the home of the country’s tech giants, which has been dominant. It is currently on a winning streak of six days, the longest since December, and is actually up 2.5% since the start of the year, benefiting from a preference for Internet-focused companies that have escaped the worst of restrictions on Main Street business.
Investors are likely to receive a stark warning about the dangers of reopening businesses too early when Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, testifies before a Senate committee later Tuesday.
Fauci told the New York Times (NYSE:NYT) that the U.S. risks "needless suffering and death" if the economy reopens too soon.
In the corporate sector, Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) is likely to remain in the spotlight after CEO Elon Musk said the electric carmaker would restart production in California in defiance of a county lockdown order.
The airline sector will also be in focus after Boeing (NYSE:BA) Chief Executive Dave Calhoun told NBC that he doesn’t expect traffic levels to rebound significantly by September, and a major U.S. carrier is likely to go out of business this year.
The market will get the latest numbers on retail inflation, with the April consumer price index due at 8:30 AM ET (12:30 GMT). Economists expect that the CPI fell 0.8% in April to an annual rate of 0.4%.
Oil futures pushed higher Tuesday, helped by Saudi Arabia’s decision Monday to voluntarily increase the extent of its production cuts by an additional million barrels a day. Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates also followed the Saudi lead.
The American Petroleum Institute will release its measure of U.S. oil inventories after the bell. A report from private consultancy Seevol on Monday suggested that stocks at the U.S. national hub of Cushing, Oklahoma, had fallen by 2.17 million barrels last week.
At 6:55 AM ET, U.S. crude futures traded 5.3% higher at $25.43 a barrel, while the international benchmark Brent contract rose 2.9% to $30.50.
Elsewhere, gold futures rose 0.6% to $1,708.15/oz, while EUR/USD traded at 1.0833, up 0.3%.