US STOCKS-Wall St set to open higher as chips recover, megacap earnings loom

Dow Jones Industrial Average
S&P 500 index
NASDAQ
PHLX Semiconductor

Dow Jones Industrial Average

DJI

0.00

S&P 500 index

SPX

0.00

NASDAQ

IXIC

0.00

PHLX Semiconductor

SOX

0.00

Futures up: Dow 0.1%, S&P 500 0.4%, Nasdaq 0.8%

Domino's Pizza gains after Q2 revenue beat

Memory chipmakers lead gains

Alphabet, Tesla and Intel to report earnings later in the week

Updates before market open

By Ragini Mathur and Avinash P

- Wall Street's main indexes were on track to open higher on Monday, as chip stocks recovered from last week's pullback and investors awaited a key slate of earnings from major technology companies that have powered the market's AI-driven rally.

The second-quarter earnings season will pick up pace later this week, with reports due from several major companies, including Alphabet GOOGL.O, Tesla TSLA.O, Intel INTC.O and IBM IBM.N.

Investors will closely watch earnings from Intel and Texas Instruments TXN.O for signals on whether the semiconductor sector can regain momentum after a sharp reversal.

A surge in AI capital spending by hyperscalers has been a major driver behind this year's market gains, lifting chip stocks and other companies that are seen as the beneficiaries of the buildout, and helping the tech-heavy U.S. indexes hit record highs.

But last week's pullback raised concerns that the rally had run too far.

The Philadelphia SE Semiconductor Index .SOX ended Friday more than 20% below its late-June record high, confirming a bear-market decline. It was still up about 65% year to date.

On Monday, memory chipmakers were leading the gains in broadly higher semiconductor stocks.

Western Digital WDC.O, Seagate Technology STX.O, Micron Technology MU.O and SanDisk SNDK.O were up between 3.7% and 4.7% in premarket trading.

"There's just a little less room for error in the market at this point. Any sort of events or earnings news could probably move the market down," said Jack Herr, senior investment analyst at GuideStone Funds.

"As we move into the second half of the year, market expectations are higher than they were before".

Markets are expecting S&P 500 earnings growth of 26% for the second quarter, year-on-year, up from an earlier estimate of 23.7%, according to data compiled by LSEG.

At 08:44 a.m. ET, Dow E-minis YMcv1 were up 73 points, or 0.14%, and S&P 500 E-minis EScv1 were up 27.75 points, or 0.37%. Nasdaq 100 E-minis NQcv1 were up 235 points, or 0.82%.

Last week's declines in major U.S. indexes came despite benign inflation data that eased some concerns about a Federal Reserve rate increase this month, and a solid start to second-quarter earnings season from major U.S. banks.

Markets are pricing in about a 12% chance of a quarter-point rate hike at the Fed's July meeting and a roughly 53% chance of another hike in September, according to CME's FedWatch tool.

Investors were closely watching the developments in the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran after a recent escalation in the nearly five-month-old conflict.

Brent crude LCOc1 briefly climbed above $90 a barrel for the first time since early June on renewed disruption to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz after Iran's Foreign Ministry said mediators had recently presented proposals to Tehran.

Among other premarket movers, Domino's Pizza DPZ.O gained 6.2% after the pizza chain's quarterly revenue edged past Wall Street estimates.