Futures surge on early signs of coronavirus slowdown in hot spots

By Uday Sampath Kumar

(Reuters) – U.S. stock index futures bounced for a second straight day on Tuesday as risk appetite returned on tentative signs the coronavirus outbreak was starting to plateau in hard-hit U.S. states. All three major indexes rallied more than 7% on Monday after the governors of New York and New Jersey said their states, hot spots of the COVID-19 disease, were showing early signs of a “flattening” of the outbreak.

But they warned against complacency as the nationwide death toll approached 11,000 and global infections surged past 1.3 million, while companies braced for an earnings recession in the face of fading demand. Exxon Mobil , Marathon Oil and Apache Corp rose between 4% and 8% as oil prices rallied amid hopes that the world’s main oil producers including Saudi Arabia and Russia would agreeing to cut output at a meeting on Thursday.

At 05:36 a.m. EDT, Dow e-minis <1YMcv1> were up 668 points, or 2.97%, S&P 500 e-minis were up 70.75 points, or 2.68% and Nasdaq 100 e-minis were up 190.5 points, or 2.37%.

SPDR S&P 500 ETFs were up 2.56%.

(Reporting by Uday Sampath in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur)