Stock futures advance
U.S. stock index futures ticked higher Friday, amid easing trade tensions and strong holiday shopping season. Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) said Thursday that this holiday season broke records, selling tens of millions of Amazon devices and billions of items from its site.
According to retail giant, more than 5 million customers started a free trial of Prime or began a paid membership in just one week. Shares of the e-commerce giant gained more than 4%, lifting the Nasdaq above 9,000 for the first time.
Mastercard (NYSE: MA) also published its SpendingPulse report, which showed U.S. retail sales rose 3.4% during the holiday season this year. Online sales grew nearly 19% year over year, according to the company.
At 6:00 a.m. ET Friday, the Dow futures were up 94.5 points, or 0.33% to 28,713.5. The S&P 500 futures rose 8.38 points, or 0.26% to 3,252.88 while the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 futures jumped 33.63 points, or 0.38% to 8,837.88.
U.S.-China phase-one trade deal
Investors are also keeping a close eye on the progress of the phase-one trade deal, which the U.S. and China announced earlier this month. On Tuesday, President Donald Trump said that “the deal is done, it’s just being translated right now.”
Then on Christmas, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said Washington and Beijing trade teams are in “close communication about detailed arrangements for the deal’s signing and other follow-up work.”
However, China is yet to disclose the details of the deal and has stated it will only do so after the agreement is officially signed off.
Oil futures higher ahead of EIA report
Meanwhile, crude oil futures rose early Friday as the market prepared to digest the weekly status report from the Energy Information Administration (EIA). The report, which has been delayed by two days because of Christmas, will be released at 11:00 a.m. ET.
Analysts expect the EIA to report a decline of around 1.7 million barrels in crude inventories for the week ended Dec. 20.
At 6:00 a.m. ET, U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures were up $0.21, or around 0.34%, at $61.89 per barrel. International Brent crude oil futures were at $68.09 a barrel, up $0.17, or about 0.25%.
