Futures are rallying on a big day for Wall Street deals
Here's a quick rundown of the major deals:
- On Saturday, AT&T said it agreed to buy Time Warner for $107.50 per share, or $85.4 billion, to form a media behemoth that will create content and own the pipes for delivery.
- On Monday, TD Ameritrade announced that it's buying Scottrade for $4 billion. Scottrade, a discount broker, is looking to take advantage of TD Ameritrade's trading platforms and education services.
- Also, the Chinese tourism conglomerate HNA Group is buying a roughly 25% stake in Hilton from the private equity company Blackstone. HNA Group is on a buying spree, and has spent over $20 billion in acquisitions this year, according to Bloomberg.
At 8:53 a.m. ET, Dow futures are up 91 points (0.50%), S&P 500 futures are up 10 points (0.48%), and Nasdaq futures are up 32 points (0.67%).
Trading in the past three weeks has been relatively quiet. The S&P 500 has not closed higher by more than 1% in 22 days. Notably, the index lost more than 1% after earnings season started on a sour note on October 11.
This tight range marks the third time this year that the index has gone at least 20 days without a 1% gain, according to Ryan Detrick, senior market strategist at LPL Financial.
John Stoltzfus, the chief investment strategist at Oppenheimer, said it is indecisiveness, not the end of the bull-market run in stocks, that's kept the S&P 500 little changed.
"With the US Presidential election just 15 days away and the Federal Reserve's December FOMC meeting only 51 days away it appears to us that the market is biding its time until it can put the outcome of the two aforementioned sources of uncertainty behind it," Stoltzfus said in a note to clients on Monday.
In earnings, T-Mobile reported an 18% jump in quarterly revenue, helped by promotions that attracted new subscribers. Its shares gained 4% pre-market.
Visa will report earnings after the closing bell.
Markit's preliminary manufacturing purchasing manager's index (flash PMI) for October will be released at 9:45 a.m. ET.