Investing.com - U.S. futures jumped on Thursday after China confirmed high-level trade talks with Washington would be held in October, prompting hopes that the trade war can be de-escalated.
Nasdaq 100 futures rose 94 points or 1.2% by 6:42 AM ET (10:42 GMT), while Dow futures gained 252 points or 1% and S&P 500 futures were up 26 points or 0.9%.
The talks were agreed to over the phone, the Chinese Commerce Ministry said, which was confirmed by a spokesman for the U.S. Trade Representative's office. No terms of the talks were given.
U.S. tariffs on over $100 billion worth of Chinese goods went into effect on Sept. 1 and plans to increase rates to 30% from 25% on another $250 billion worth of Chinese imports are set for Oct. 1.
Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) rose 0.8%, while Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) and Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) gained 1%. PayPal (NASDAQ:PYPL) jumped 1%, while Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F) was up 1.1%.
Enterprise software group Cloudera (NYSE:CLDR) surged 12.3% after its earnings came in better than expected, helped by a record contribution from its partnership with IBM (NYSE:IBM).
Slack (NYSE:WORK) slumped 12.8% after it forecast a slightly larger-than-expected loss per share for the fiscal third-quarter in its first earnings report since the company went public. The shares have fallen nearly 20% since the initial public offering.
On the economic front, the ADP Employment report comes out at 8:15 AM, with the latest weekly jobless claims at 8:30 AM. A final reading of services Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) for August, ISM non-manufacturing data for August, and factory orders for July will also be released at 10:00 AM.
In commodities, crude oil fell 0.1% to $56.19 a barrel. Gold futures were down 0.8% to $1,547.75 a troy ounce, while the U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of six major currencies, was down 0.2% to 98.172.