Stock futures hug the flat line as investors await earnings

Stock futures opened little changed Monday evening as investors waited for more earnings results and Covid-19 vaccine development updates to roll in.

Earlier Monday, the three major indices closed out the session higher. The Nasdaq Composite posted a 2.5% advance to far outperform the S&P 500 and Dow, with a broad tech rally returning after last week’s pause. Still, the S&P 500’s 0.8% advance on Monday pushed it into positive territory for the year to date and its highest level since February 21.

IBM (IBM) shares traded higher Monday evening, after the company posted a smaller than expected quarterly sales decline over last year, with the beat driven largely by a 30% jump in IBM’s cloud segment revenue. Analysts largely expect to also see solid cloud growth in Microsoft’s (MSFT) quarterly results after the bell on Wednesday, with many companies having leaned more heavily on these services “as the prospects of a heavy remote workforce for the foreseeable future now looks in the cards with this COVID-19 backdrop,” said WedBush analyst Dan Ives.

Elsewhere on the earnings front, Coca-Cola (KO) is set to report results before market open on Tuesday. Snap (SNAP) and Texas Instruments (TXN) are among the notable companies expected to result after market close.

Investors earlier Monday mostly shrugged off updates on the coronavirus vaccine development front, with the race to create an effective, safe inoculation still under way. AstraZeneca (AZN) shares closed 4% lower before steadying overnight, even after The Lancet medical journal published promising results of a Covid-19 vaccine study by the company and the University of Oxford. Earlier, Pfizer (PFE) and BioNTech (BNTX) reported positive early data from their own Covid-19 vaccine study, sending BioNTech shares higher but Pfizer shares little changed.

Moderna (MRNA), which is developing a vaccine of its own, saw its shares sell off 13% Monday and into late trading, with the stock paring some of its strong year to date gains following the news from other companies.

Officials from Merck (MRK), Moderna (MRNA), Pfizer (PFE), AstraZeneca (AZN) and Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) are set to testify on Tuesday before the House Committee of Energy and Commerce to discuss their progress in developing a Covid-19 vaccine.

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6:05 p.m. ET Monday: Stock futures open little changed

Here were the main moves at the start of the overnight session for U.S. equity futures, as of 6:05 p.m. ET:

• S&P 500 futures (ES=F): 3,243.75, down 1.5 points or 0.05%

• Dow futures (YM=F): 26,607.00, down 26 points, or 0.1%

• Nasdaq futures (NQ=F): 10,952.25, up 1.25 points, or 0.01%

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