By Amy Caren Daniel
(Reuters) - The three main U.S. indexes were set to open higher on Thursday as oil prices rose and a couple of big deals helped rekindle optimism and offset fears of a Sino-U.S. trade war.
Broadcom fell 12.3 percent in premarket trading after the chipmaker's $18.9 billion deal to buy business software maker CA Inc caught investors and analysts by surprise. CA's shares jumped 18.1 percent.
Comcast, up 0.4 percent, made a $34 billion bid for Sky, trumping an offer from 21st Century Fox. Shares of Rupert Murdoch's company gained 0.4 percent.
Markets were rattled on Wednesday after the United States threatened to impose tariffs on an additional $200 billion worth of Chinese goods. China said Thursday the two countries have not been in touch about restarting negotiations and while it does not want a trade war, it would fight if necessary.
"While markets have typically reacted negatively to any escalation on trade, the overall impact has been relatively modest under the circumstances, which suggests investors are far from panic mode right now," Craig Erlam, senior market analyst at online forex broker Oanda, said in a note.
"There still seems to be some hope that common sense will prevail and a full-blown trade war will be averted."
Wednesday's drop though was not as steep as in late March and early April when the S&P 500 tumbled more than 2 percent on four occasions as trade rhetoric escalated.
Boeing and Caterpillar, among the Dow's biggest drags on Wednesday and the hardest hit by the recent trade dispute, were up about 1 percent.
Also helping sentiment was crude oil prices recouping some ground following sharp losses in the previous session. [O/R]
At 8:53 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis were up 207 points, or 0.84 percent. S&P 500 e-minis were up 17.25 points, or 0.62 percent and Nasdaq 100 e-minis were up 46.75 points, or 0.64 percent.
Delta Air Lines rose 1.9 percent after the company's quarterly profit fell less than expected. Delta though slashed its full-year earnings forecast as fuel costs surged.
Overall, S&P 500 companies are expected to post second-quarter profit growth of around 21 percent, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
The earnings season kicks off in earnest on Friday, when big Wall Street banks JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Citigroup report results. Shares of all three banks were up about 0.7 percent.
Weekly jobless claims hit a two-month low last week, according to a Labor Department report, in a sign that labor market conditions remained robust in early July.
While consumer prices barely rose in June, the underlying trend continued to point to a steady buildup of inflation pressure that could keep the Federal Reserve on a path of gradual interest rate increases.
(Reporting by Amy Caren Daniel in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta)
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