Wall Street set to rebound with focus on White House race

Wall Street's major indexes were set to bounce back on Monday after their steepest weekly loss since March as investors geared up for an event-packed week centered around the US presidential election.

Market participants expect short-term trading turmoil and major long-term policy shifts related to taxes, government spending, trade and regulation depending on whether President Donald Trump or his Democratic challenger Joe Biden wins the White House race.

Biden is ahead in national opinion polls, but races are tight in battleground states that could tip the election to Trump. Analysts said the outcome most likely to shake equity markets in the near term would be no immediate outcome at all on Tuesday night.

"Traders are trying to position themselves to the idea that just having a result will be good for the market," said Rick Meckler, a partner at Cherry Lane Investments in New Vernon, New Jersey.

Investors betting on a Biden administration, which is expected to deliver a massive fiscal stimulus and promote green energy, have fueled a rally in solar stocks, industrials and small-cap names in recent weeks.

On the other hand, JP Morgan lists Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citigroup in its "Trump basket" of stocks. Shares of the Wall Street lenders were up about 1% in premarket trading.

The S&P 500 ended a turbulent week at near six-week lows on Friday after quarterly reports from technology mega-caps failed to impress and on surging coronavirus cases in the United States and Europe.

The CBOE volatility index, known as Wall Street's fear gauge, inched lower on Monday after ratcheting up to near five-month highs last week.

Focus this week will also be on the Federal Reserve's two-day policy meeting, the monthly jobs report and earnings from about a quarter of the S&P 500 companies, including chipmaker Qualcomm, carmaker General Motors and insurer American International Group Inc.

At 8:43 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis were up 397 points, or 1.5%, S&P 500 e-minis were up 39.75 points, or 1.22%, and Nasdaq 100 e-minis were up 95.75 points, or 0.87%.

Apple Inc, Facebook Inc and Amazon.com Inc rose between 1% and 1.7% after falling sharply in the previous session.

Estee Lauder Cos Inc rose 4.7% after the cosmetics company beat estimates for quarterly results, benefiting from strong Chinese demand and a surge in online orders for its skincare products.

Market research firm Nielsen Holdings Plc gained 6.2% on plans to sell its consumer goods data unit for $2.7 billion to private equity firm Advent International.