Peter Nurse   

Investing.com – U.S. stocks are seen opening mixed Monday, with tech stocks underperforming as investors reposition after the Federal Reserve’s hawkish turn.

The contract traded at 7:20 AM ET (14200 GMT) and was up 0.7%. It dropped 0.1% by 22 points.

As investors took in the economic potential damage from Omicron Covid-19, as well as the Federal Reserve’s indication that they could accelerate their tapering this month because of the high level inflation rate, the major indexes all fell back last week. 

For the first time since September 2020 the recorded their fourth consecutive negative week. The and were also down for a second week.

U.S. officials stated that the Omicron coronavirus variant has now spread to approximately one-third of U.S. state. However, early signs suggest that the severity of symptoms could be mild.

President Joe Biden’s chief medical advisor Anthony Fauci told CNN in a weekend interview that “it doesn’t look like there’s a great degree of severity to it,” adding that existing vaccines appear to offer a still-high degree of protection against it. 

Strategists at Morgan Stanley indicated in a note that they are “not that concerned about omicron as a major risk factor for equities.” Instead, it’s the Fed that investors need to concentrate on as “tapering is tightening for the markets and it will lead to lower valuations like it always does at this stage of any recovery.”

After a Wall Street Journal article, Kohl’s (NYSE) was in corporate news. An activist investor urged Kohls to think about selling or dissolving its fast-growing ecommerce business.

Alibaba The NYSE: will be also in the spotlight after China’s retail giant announced plans to reform its domestic and international e-commerce operations. 

Crude prices climbed Monday after Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil exporter, raised the price for its oil heading to the U.S. and Asia by up to 80 cents from the previous month, an indication of its confidence in the strength of demand in the two regions. 

Futures were trading 3.5% higher at $68.58 per barrel by 7:01 AM ET. The contract increased 3.2% to $72.13. Concerns that the coronavirus variant might impact fuel demand led to both benchmarks falling last week.

The price fell 0.2% to $1780.80/oz and traded 0.2% higher at 1.1293.