Deals in the supermarket, oil patch and telecom industries leads off a merger Monday.
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Dow Jones futures were rising by 0.36%. The S&P 500 added 0.25% and the Nasdaq Composite was up 0.44%.
T-Mobile and Sprint reached a $26.5 billion agreement Sunday to combine in a deal that would reshape the U.S. wireless landscape by reducing it to three major cellphone providers.
In Europe all eyes were on Sainsbury’s, whose shares shot up 20 percent at the open after the retailer agreed to a merger with Walmart’s ASDA.
Marathon Petroleum Corp. plans to buy pipeline and refining company Andeavor for more than $20 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.
It was a mixed bag for U.S. stocks Friday, as a rough day for energy shares weighed on the market.
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The Dow Jones Industrial Average ticked 11.15 points lower, or 0.05%, to 24,311.19. The S&P 500 rose 2.97 points, or 0.1%, to 2,669.91. The Nasdaq Composite was up 1.12 points, or 0.02%, at 7,119.80.
For the week, all three major indexes recorded modest declines. The Dow was down roughly 0.6%, the S&P 500 fell 0.01% and the Nasdaq dropped 0.4%.
The energy sector was the top laggard in the S&P, posting a loss of 1.2% on the day. The selloff was driven by Exxon Mobil. The largest U.S. oil company missed estimates for first-quarter earnings on weaker results in its refining business. Exxon, a Dow member, fell 3.7%.
Winners in Friday’s session included Amazon and Microsoft, which were boosted by better-than-expected earnings. Amazon, which touched all-time intraday highs, rallied 3.6% to
Earnings season continues in force this week, with 136 companies in the S&P 500, or just over one-quarter of the benchmark index, out with quarterly results.
We’ll also hear from five Dow companies: McDonald’s on Monday morning, Merck and Pfizer on Tuesday morning and Apple in the afternoon, and DowDuPont on Thursday morning.
According to the Commerce Department, the U.S. economy expanded at a 2.3% annual pace in the first quarter of 2018, somewhat slower than in the prior three quarters, but better than the 2% economists polled by Reuters expected.
On Monday’s economic calendar, investors will get to digest the latest data on personal income and spending as well as pending home sales.
The big economic report of the week and the month will be the April Employment Report which will be released on Friday.
London’s FTSE rose 0.29%, France’s CAC edged up 0.08% and Germany’s DAX gained 0.29%.
In Asian markets, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng climbed 1.6%.
Markets in Japan and China were closed for holidays.
FOX Business’ Leia Klingel and Matthew Rocco contributed to this article.
