Peter Nurse   

U.S. stocks open higher on Monday as investors prepare for the week ahead that will include a flood of earnings from corporations, the Federal Reserve meeting, and the U.S. Jobs report.

The contract traded up 180 points or 0.5% at 7:10 am ET (1110 GMT) while climbing 70 points or 0.4% to reach the highest level.

On Friday, all three major indices reached record heights. The blue-chip rose 5.8% in October while the broad-based index increased 6.9%. Technology-focused indices were 7.3% higher.

Strong earnings are the key to these gains. Although many big names have already reported numbers, there is a larger range of companies that will report this week. 

Coca-Cola (NYSE 🙂 will not be focusing on earnings after a Wall Street Journal report that said the soft drink giant has taken full control over BodyArmor, a sports drink-maker. American Airlines (NASDAQ:), will also be under scrutiny after the weather disruptions and tight crewing schedules impacted its weekend flight schedule. Meanwhile, Roblox (NYSE 🙂 experienced a long outage this weekend.

This week, however, all eyes will be on the two day policy meeting by the that ends on Wednesday. The outcome of which, it is widely believed, will lead to the end of the central bank’s bond buying taper. The central bank could provide information about the timing of interest rate increases. Markets are now expecting the first hike to occur in 2022.

The economic calendar is largely empty Monday, but the other big event for the week will be October’s official on Friday, which is expected to show a sharp improvement in hiring to 413,000 payrolls following the previous month’s disappointing 194,000 release.

Crude prices gained Monday even after China, the world’s second largest consumer, announced it had released gasoline and diesel from its fuel reserves, easing concerns about the tight nature of the global supply.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC+) holds its latest meeting this week. They are expected to keep to their original plan to increase December’s supply by 400,000 barrels daily when they gather on Thursday.

At 7:10 am ET futures had traded 0.5% higher to $84.00/barrel, and the contract rose 0.8%, reaching $84.42. 

Also, the price of gold rose 0.1% at $1,785.85/oz while it traded 0.1% lower at 1.1570.