Stocks Future Slip

The major contracts tied to the major U.S. Stocks indexes ticked lower early Monday. Wall Street could see dull trading after reaching fresh records last week.Dow futures implied an opening loss of about 70 points, while contracts tied to the S&P 500 shed 0.2%. Nasdaq-100 futures lost 0.3%.Early trading on Monday saw that the reopening plays fell slightly with shares of Carnival, United Airlines and Gap off about 1% in the premarket. Tesla gained 1.5% to $687.01 in early trading after Canaccord Genuity upgraded the stock to buy and raised its price target to $1,071, citing its battery innovations.

Shares of Nuance Communications jumped 21% in early trading as Microsoft is in talks to obtain the speech-recognition company. Microsoft shares were slightly higher.The movement in the futures market followed yet another record close for the Dow Jones Industrial Average on Friday when it jumped nearly 300 points to end at 33,800.60. The S&P 500 gained 0.8% and hit its third straight record close.

Stocks linked to the regaining economy led many of last week’s gains as vaccination efforts throughout the U.S. accelerated. The Dow and the S&P 500 climbed at least 2% last week. The Nasdaq bounced back 3.1% over the same period as some traders snapped up big tech names.The first-quarter earnings of the season begin this week, with expectations set for broadly positive news and an uptrend for U.S. equities thanks to a recovering economy. Many of the nation’s largest banks, including Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, will this week report results for the three months ended March 31.

Investors will also keep an eye on President Joe Biden’s effort to advance a major infrastructure proposal known as the American Jobs Plan. Biden, who with other Democrats promised significant infrastructure overhaul in the 2020 elections, will meet with a bipartisan group of lawmakers on Monday to try to persuade Capitol Hill to back the $2 trillion package. The plan would also increase the corporate tax rate to 28% and a crackdown on other overseas tax avoidance strategies.

Dennis DeBusschere, Evercore ISI equity strategist said that the positive fiscal shock, strong housing tailwinds, a large stock of savings, and the Fed letting inflation run above 2% mark a fundamentally different economic backdrop. The data of the US is expected to be strong this week and US vaccinations are increasing. Real rates are still too negative and are headed higher, supporting risk-on factor outperformance.