US STOCKS-Futures move higher as trade deal hopes rise

U.S. stock index futures rose on Monday as expectations of a trade truce were strengthened by a report that the world's two largest economies were "very close" to a deal, while jeweler Tiffany surged after agreeing to a sale.

Beijing and Washington were nearing a "phase one" trade deal, a Chinese state-backed tabloid said, lifting the mood further after a U.S. national security adviser said on Saturday that a pact was still possible by the end of the year. Trade-sensitive chip stocks, including Advanced Micro Devices Inc, Micron Technology Inc, and Applied Materials Inc, rose between 0.7% and 1% in premarket trading.

Last week the benchmark S&P 500 snapped a six-week winning streak and the tech-heavy Nasdaq registered its first weekly drop in eight weeks amid conflicting reports over the trade truce. Trade deal hopes and robust third-quarter corporate earnings had helped Wall Street's main indexes hit record highs this month.

At 7:12 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis were up 69 points, or 0.25%. S&P 500 e-minis were up 6.75 points, or 0.22% and Nasdaq 100 e-minis were up 26 points, or 0.31%. Shares of Tesla Inc rose 5% premarket after Chief Executive Elon Musk indicated in a tweet on Sunday that the carmaker received 200,000 orders for its electric pickup truck within three days of launch.

Tiffany & Co gained 5.8% after the luxury jeweler agreed to a sweetened $16.2 billion deal with France's LVMH. U.S. discount brokerage TD Ameritrade Holding Corp was up 2% after larger rival Charles Schwab Corp said it would buy the company in an all-stock deal valued at about $26 billion. Schwab was down about 1%.

Uber Technologies Inc fell 4.2% as the ride-hailing company was stripped of its London operating license for the second time in just over two years. Netflix Inc slipped 0.8% after Wells Fargo downgraded the shares of the streaming service to "underperform" from "market perform".

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)