Wall Street futures extend gains as BofA rises after earnings

By Ankika Biswas

(Reuters) -U.S. stock index futures extended gains on Monday on better-than-expected results from Bank of America, with investors scanning the latest batch of earnings for impact of decades-high inflation and rising interest rates on corporate profit.

Bank of America Corp rose 3% in premarket trading as the lender benefited from higher net interest income in its third quarter, even though it added $378 million to its loan-loss reserves as it braces for a weakening economy.

Major U.S. banks including JPMorgan Chase & Co, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup Inc and Wells Fargo & Co reported a slide in net income on Friday as turbulent markets choked off investment banking activity and lenders set aside more funds to cover loan losses.

Shares of Goldman Sachs, which will report results on Tuesday, was up 1.7%, following reports of a plan to overhaul to combine its investment banking and trading businesses.

Major megacap growth stocks like Apple Inc, Meta Platforms Inc, Amazon.com, and Tesla Inc added between 1.3% and 2.1% as the yield on U.S. 10-year bonds retreated from multi-year highs. [US/]

Tesla Inc, Netflix and Johnson & Johnson are also expected to report results later in the week.

Analysts now expect profit for S&P 500 companies to have risen just 3.6% from a year ago, much lower than an 11.1% increase expected at the start of July, according to Refinitiv data.

At 7:17 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis were up 294 points, or 0.99%, S&P 500 e-minis were up 43.5 points, or 1.21%, and Nasdaq 100 e-minis were up 154.5 points, or 1.44%.

Also aiding sentiment was new British finance minister Jeremy Hunt’s move to reverse nearly all of Prime Minister Liz Truss’s mini-budget that had sparked a market turmoil, and rein in a vast energy subsidy plan.

The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq marked their fourth weekly loss in five on Friday, after data showed little signs that inflation was cooling, prompting traders to start pricing in the possibility of a 1% hike by the Federal Reserve at its November rate-setting meeting.

Splunk Inc gained 8.7% as activist investor Starboard Value LP holding about 5% stake in the software firm and planning to push it to take steps that would boost their share price.

(Reporting by Ankika Biswas in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D’Silva and Arun Koyyur.)