NEW YORK, March 28 (Reuters) - U.S. stocks were expected to rise on Tuesday after a quick bout of profit-taking on Monday set the stage for an early rally as Wall Street gears up for what should be a strong earnings period.
Consumer confidence and retail sales data were due for release just after the market opens, and may help shape trading, analysts said.
``In general, there is a good tone here this morning,' said James Volk, co-director of institutional trading at D.A. Davidson and Co. in Portland, Ore. Volk noted that merger deals along with expectations of strong earnings and ``window dressing' have helped create a positive trading environment.
``It's earnings and end of the quarter window dressing,' he said referring to the end-of-quarter buying that some fund managers do to help push up prices of some of their bigger portfolio holdings.
The Standard & Poor's 500 futures index for June was up 3.50 points at 1,542.0 while the Nasdaq futures index for June gained 38.05 points at 4,800.05
But Wall Street is also tuned into the Microsoft Corp. (NasdaqNM:MSFT - news) antitrust case as well as the ongoing OPEC meetings on an increase to oil supplies. Those issues could weigh on trading, market watchers noted.
On Monday, the Dow Jones industrial average fell 86.87 points, or 0.78 percent, to 11,025.85 as investors took money out of financial stocks following a strong week for the sector.
The Standard & Poor's 500 stock index (^SPX - news) slipped 3.60 points, or 0.24 percent, to 1,523.86 after striking a new high last week.
The Nasdaq composite (^IXIC - news) fell 4.47 points, or 0.09 percent, to 4,958.56. Declines led advances on both the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq market.
The 30-year U.S. Treasury bond rose 8/32 pushing the yield lower to 5.98 percent.
Lehman Brothers' technical analyst Steve Shobin said the Standard & Poor's 500 index is due for a ``minor correction' but that further gains are likely until May.
``The importance of the financial sector was never more clear than last week, when the broad market rallied sharply following strength in financial stocks,' Shobin said. ``Thus it was with some concern that we watched the financials sell off sharply yesterday.'
He noted, though, that ``one day of sloppiness is hardly catastrophic.'
Bank One Corp. (NYSE:ONE - news) may trade actively on Tuesday after the fourth-largest U.S. bank holding company named James Dimon as its chief executive, giving the former rising star at Citigroup Inc. (NYSE:C - news) the job of righting its credit card operations and boosting its slumping share price.
Bank One shares gained 2-9/16 on Monday to close at 30-7/8 while the broader financial sector retreated.
In corporate news, Lucent Technologies (NYSE:LU - news) said it will launch the first video network designed strictly for the Internet. Metromedia Fiber Network (NasdaqNM:MFNX - news) will supply the metropolitan and the long-haul optical network infrastructure.
On the economic calendar, consumer confidence data for March is due for release at 10 a.m. EST (1500 GMT) and weekly retail sales figures from LJR Redbook should hit the market at 10:30 a.m. EST (1530 GMT).
Jobless data for the week and gross domestic product figures for the fourth quarter will be released on Thursday. |
