Stock futures rise ahead of Federal Reserve’s decision

Futures for the S&P 500 rose 0.3% on Monday, after benchmark gauges closed last week at a record high of 2021’s 67th. The contract for the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which is just shy of an all-time high, ticked up 0.2%. Futures for the Nasdaq-100 were up 0.4%, indicating a strong start to the week for technology stocks.

Shares of Moderna rose 2.1% in premarket trading, making it one of the best-performing stocks alongside vaccine maker rival Pfizer. President Biden’s chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci encouraged Americans to get a COVID-19 booster on Sunday, while the UK government said it planned to give every adult in England a booster shot by the end of the year. Arena Pharmaceuticals rocketed 93% premarket when the company said it would be bought by Pfizer in a $6.7 billion deal.

In the bond market, yields on benchmark 10-year Treasury notes declined to 1.477% from 1.487% on Friday. Yields move in the opposite direction to bond prices.

Investors are hitting hard following monetary-policy decisions by the Federal Reserve and announcements from the Bank of England, the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan. The Fed is expected to accelerate the pace at which it is ending its bond-buying program and to signal that it will raise interest rates next year to put the brakes on inflation. Data published Friday showed consumer prices in November increased at the fastest annual rate since 1982.

Gregory Perdon, co-chief investment officer at Arbuthnot Latham, said he expects stocks to continue rising even as the Fed tightens monetary policy.

“Classic textbook rates rise, stocks will be down,” Mr. Perden said. The reality is that there’s so much liquidity, there’s so much demand to get return on assets that eventually we’ll have to be a much more aggressive stock knockout.”

Companies that were defeated by the travel disruption fell before the bell. Cruise operators Carnival and Norwegian Cruise Line both fell more than 1%, and Delta Air Lines and American Airlines Group were among several airline stocks that posted premarket declines.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries said some of the recovery in oil consumption that the cartel had expected this year would result in Omicron shifting to early 2022. Benchmark Brent-crude futures fell 0.8% to $74.56 a barrel in international energy markets.

European natural gas prices jumped 10% on Monday. Supply of gas, a major heating and electricity generation fuel in Europe, is well below its recent average for the time of year, raising concerns that cold weather will run short of reserves. Tensions on Russia’s border with Ukraine, a conduit for gas exports to Europe, have also driven up prices in recent weeks. US natural-gas futures rose 1.9% to $4 per million British thermal unit.

The Turkish lira fell 1.7% to $14.12 ahead of an expected rate cut by the central bank on Thursday. The Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey has come under pressure from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to lower borrowing costs in the face of rapid inflation this year, hitting the currency hard.

There was a mixed trend in the foreign stock markets. Stokes Europe 600 rose 0.6%, led by shares of infrastructure, auto and technology companies. Among individual movers, Vifor Pharma jumped 20% when the Swiss pharmaceutical firm said it was in talks to be bought by Australia’s CSL. Shares of THG fell 5.9%, pushing the UK e-commerce company’s loss to 64% in the quarter.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 lost 0.7%, the Shanghai Composite Index lost 0.4% and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng 0.2%.