Stocks open higher ahead of manufacturing, factory data

stocks

JeeYeon Park
CNBC

1 hour ago

Stocks opened higher on Monday, extending gains after the Dow and S&P 500 turned in four-straight weeks of gains, as investors looked ahead to some key economic reports.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was 42 points higher in early morning trading.

The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq also opened higher. The CBOE Volatility Index (VIX), widely considered the best gauge of fear in the market, traded near 13.

September factory orders and long-lasting manufactured goods data were expected to be released later. Economists in a Reuters survey expect August factory orders to rise 0.3 percent versus a 2.4 percent drop in July orders while September orders are expected to rise 1.7 percent.

Investors are looking for further clues from the country's employment report due at the end of the week as to when the U.S. Federal Reserve will begin winding down its $85 billion-a-month asset purchases, after the central bank held policy unchanged last week.

Last week, the Fed's monetary committee noted that it saw improvement in economic activity and labor market conditions but had "decided to await more evidence that progress will be sustained before adjusting the pace of its purchases."

Economists expect to see 125,000 jobs added according to economists polled by Reuters, which would be the second-lowest number of jobs added of 2013, and that the unemployment rate has ticked up to 7.3 percent from 7.2 percent.

The central bank is not expected to begin tapering off its stimulus until next year, a delay partly due to data and partly due to the recent political impasse over government spending.

BlackBerry shares fell over 16 percent after the company said it is abandoning a plan to sell itself and will instead raise some $1 billion and replace its chief executive, according to reports from the Globe and Mail newspaper.

Kellogg ticked higher after the food manufacturer reported a gain in quarterly profit, thanks to a decline in cereal-making costs, and said it would cut nearly 7 percent of its workforce by 2017.

Twitter raised its expected IPO range to between $23 and $25 a share at 70 million shares, according to an SEC filing, up from a previously expected range of between $17 and $20 a share. The company will raise $1.75 billion at the high end of the range and the company's overall valuation would be $13.6 billion.

Meanwhile, Asian and European equities traded higher on Monday, as investors looked ahead to the U.S. jobs data and central bank meetings to be held on Thursday by the European Central Bank (ECB) and Bank of England (BoE).

There are expectations that the ECB could cut rates when it meets on Thursday, especially after a plunge in inflation to 0.7 percent on year in October, well below the bank's target of just under 2 percent, and expectations that a strong euro could damage exports.

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