US pre-open: Stocks mixed ahead of earnings-heavy week
Wall Street futures were pointing to a mixed session before the opening bell on Monday ahead of some key corporate earnings later in the week.
As of 1230 GMT, Dow futures were down 0.07%, while S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 futures had the indices opening 0.26% and 0.90% firmer, respectively.
The Dow closed 179.03 points lower on Friday but still managed to carve out a gain for the week as a whole after new President Joe Biden got to work on pushing his proposed $1.9trn stimulus package through Congress.
With things being quite quiet on the earnings front on Monday, market participants will likely be looking for updates on said stimulus programme and mulling over the Covid-19 pandemic itself.
Joe Biden's pick for surgeon general said over the weekend that the US would have to race to keep up with the now mutating coronavirus.
"The virus is basically telling us that it's going to continue to change and we've got to be ready for it," said Dr Vivek Murthy. "We've got to number one, do much better genomic surveillance, so we can identify variants when they arise and that means we've got to double down on public health measures like masking and avoiding indoor gatherings."
The US has now recorded more than 25.7m confirmed cases of Covid-19, claiming the lives of roughly 429,490 Americans in the process.
On the macro front, the Chicago Fed's national activity index for December will be published at 1330 GMT, while the Dallas Fed's January manufacturing index will follow at 1530 GMT.
In the corporate space, quarterly results from Apple, Microsoft, Netflix, Tesla, McDonald's, Honeywell, Caterpillar and Boeing were all slated for release this week.