A holiday-shortened trading week begun with all signs pointing to a higher open for Wall Street on Monday, with the dollar weakening and gold hitting a new record high above $1,167 an ounce.
The major averages still hold onto solid gains for the month of November with five trading sessions left (including Friday's abbreviated trading day) despite last week's mixed performance.
Just one economic report of note — the National Association of Realtors will be out with October existing home sales numbers at 10 am New York time. Economists foresee a 2.3 percent rise to an annual sales rate of 5.7 million units, following a 9.2 percent jump for September.
Tyson Foods reported earnings of 28 cents a share excluding a large goodwill impairment charge. Shares gained 1.8 percent in premarket trading.
Campbell Soup and oilfield services company BJ Services also are due to report earnings before the bell.
The real earnings fireworks come after the closing bell, when Hewlett-Packard is the last Dow component to report.
Futures also gained after St. Louis Fed President James Bullard said the Fed should continue buying mortgage backed securities and other assets longer than it currently plans.
Cadbury shares rose 2.3 percent premarket as Kraft Foods is reportedly mulling a higher bid even as Hersheyand Italy's Ferrero discuss a possible joint bid for Cadbury. Switzerland's Nestle is now also said to be in the mix.
Activision Blizzard gained 2.2 percent as Barron's called the video game maker's shares inexpensive.
Other stocks to watch: Ciena dropped 4.8 percent on news that the company is buying the optical networking and carrier ethernet business of bankrupt Nortel for $769 million.
Microsoft and News Corp.are reportedly discussing a deal that would see News Corp. get paid to remove its news websites from Google. Microsoft owns the competing Bing search engine. Microsoft and Google both edged higher premarket.
Ebayis back up and running on its web site following some weekend disruptions.
