Futures tick up ahead of U.S. election results

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stock index futures rose on Tuesday to begin the overnight session, which will see trading through the preliminary results of the U.S. presidential election.

Stock indexes rose for a second straight session earlier, as investors bet Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton would be elected to succeed Barack Obama.

Wall Street sees the former secretary of state as a status quo candidate lending stability to the markets, while Republican candidate Donald Trump's stances on foreign policy, trade and immigration are more conducive to volatility.

"The market's betting that a Clinton victory will lift the cloud of uncertainty we've been facing the last two weeks," said Michael James, managing director of equity trading at Wedbush Securities in Los Angeles. "We're basically back to where we were last week. The market had gotten oversold."

 

Before rebounding in the last two sessions, the S&P 500 notched a nine-day losing streak, its longest since December 1980. After falling 3 percent during the streak, the index is now 0.55 percent below its close on Oct. 24.

At the end of the regular session, the combined 52-week highs on the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq were at their highest since Oct. 25.

At 6:33 p.m. EST (2333 GMT) S&P 500 e-minis were up 6.75 points, or 0.32 percent, with 18,130 contracts changing hands; Nasdaq 100 e-minis were up 14.5 points, or 0.3 percent, in volume of 2,297 contracts and Dow e-minis <1YMc1> were up 48 points, or 0.26 percent, with 2,417 contracts changing hands.

The iShares MSCI Mexico Capped ETF , known of late as the "Trump ETF," climbed 1.75 percent during the regular session. The exchange-traded fund is seen as inversely correlated to Trump's chance of winning, since his policies are seen as negative for the Mexican economy.

The Mexican peso > extended its rally against the U.S. dollar into a fifth session. The currency hit 18.2407 per dollar, its strongest since Aug. 26, and was recently up 0.18 percent for a combined gain of nearly 6 percent since Nov. 2.

(Additional reporting by Noel Randewich in San Francisco; Editing by James Dalgleish)