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Stock index futures pointed to yet another positive open for Wall Street Monday, with world shares hitting 10-month highs on hopes that the global economic recovery is picking up steam.
By now, it's abundantly clear that the old Wall Street cliché "sell in May and go away" did not apply this year. The Dow, the S&P 500, and the Nasdaq are coming off four straight days of gains, the best four-day streak in a month, and the latter two are now on track for their sixth straight month of gains.
The Dow is headed for its fifth month of gains in six, while Friday's closes were the highest since last October.
But Monday could be one of those days affected by a "news vacuum": there are few events on the economic or earnings calendars, and recent activity has been marked by very light volume, which often tends to make the market's swings more volatile.
Nonetheless, the momentum — for the moment — is clearly positive.
There could be a multibillion dollar deal in the works this morning involving Dow component Procter & Gamble [PG
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] . Published reports say the consumer products giant will announce a deal to sell its prescription drug business to Warner Chilcott [WCRX
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] for about $3 billion.
In other deal news, the Ricketts family has finalized a deal to buy the Chicago Cubs from Tribune for $845 million. That transaction still needs the approval of major league baseball owners, and the court that's overseeing Tribune's bankruptcy case.
Early market movers also included government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, both of which benefited from the Federal Reserve's purchase Friday of $5.6 billion in housing debt. The Fed program is targeted at spurring borrowing by keeping interest rates down.
Fannie [FNM
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] shares surged more than 15 percent in premarket trading, while Freddie [FRE
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] was up nearly 10 percent. Both stocks were among the highest-volume issues ahead of the US market open.
Another beaten-down stock, Advanced Micro Devices [AMD
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], gained more than 5 percent premarket following an upgrade from Citigroup. AMD shares are off more than 35 percent over the past year.
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Data is a real-time snapshot *Data is delayed at least 15 minutes