By Shreyashi Sanyal
(Reuters) – U.S. stock index futures traded flat on Tuesday in the run-up to the first of a couple of readings on inflation this week, while General Electric surged on its plan to split into three public companies.
Data from the Labor Department due at 8:30 a.m. ET will likely show its producer price index for final demand rose 0.6% in October, with accelerating inflation and tighter monetary policy becoming a bigger concern for investors than the COVID-19 pandemic.
The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq closed at all-time highs on Monday for the eighth straight session, while the Dow clocked its second consecutive record closing high.
A better-than-expected earnings season, positive developments around COVID-19 antiviral pills and the loosening of travel curbs have recently helped the market continue its record run.
General Electric Co jumped 11.6% in premarket trading after the U.S. conglomerate said it would split itself into three companies focused on aviation, healthcare and power.
Tesla Inc shares rose 1.4%, rebounding from a nearly 5% fall on Monday after Chief Executive Elon Musk’s Twitter poll proposing to sell a tenth of his holdings garnered 57.9% vote in favor of the sale.
The proposal also raised questions about whether Musk may have violated his settlement with the U.S. securities regulator again.
At 6:50 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis were down 25 points, or 0.07%, S&P 500 e-minis were up 1.5 points, or 0.03%, and Nasdaq 100 e-minis were up 34.5 points, or 0.21%.
Robinhood Markets Inc slipped 3.1% after the online retail brokerage said a third party had obtained access to the email addresses of about five million of its customers in a security breach incident.
Zynga Inc jumped 6.6% after the “FarmVille” creator beat quarterly net bookings estimates, while Tripadvisor Inc fell 7.4% after reporting downbeat quarterly earnings and announcing the departure of Chief Executive Stephen Kaufer.
(Reporting by Shreyashi Sanyal and Devik Jain in Bengaluru; Editing by Aditya Soni)
