Stock futures are pointed higher to close out the week, as investor anxiety from the Fed minutes dies down. The central bank will remain in focus today, though; several Fed speakers will take the mic, as a warm-up of sorts to new Fed Chair Jerome Powell's big testimony next week. With bond yields retreating again, Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJI) futures are more than 100 points above fair value, and S&P 500 Index (SPX) and Nasdaq-100 Index (NDX) futures are higher as well, with the latter on track to snap a four-day losing streak. All three indexes will need strong performances today to secure weekly wins, however.
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New York Fed President William Dudley will speak, as well as Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester, San Francisco Fed President John Williams, Kansas City Fed President Esther George, and Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren. For earnings, Cabot Oil & Gas (COG), Huntsman Corporation (HUN), and Royal Bank of Canada (RY) will close out the week.
Asian markets followed in Wall Street's bullish footsteps, with energy stocks some of the day's biggest gainers. Additionally, a big rally in tech shares lifted South Korea's Kospi 1.5%, while Japan's Nikkei jumped 0.7% as a weakening yen buoyed exporters and data showed a slightly larger-than-forecast rise in consumer prices last month. Elsewhere in the region, Hong Kong's Hang Seng added 1%, while China's Shanghai Composite rose 0.6% -- shrugging off the state's seizure of Anbang Insurance Group, as the company's founder Wu Xiaohui faces charges for alleged fraud.
European benchmarks are mixed at midday, though moves are modest as traders look toward today's Fed speeches in the U.S. Also in focus is a negative earnings reaction for financial firm Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), though shares of German-based Deutsche Telekom are higher post-earnings. Most recently, the German DAX was up 0.2%, the French CAC 40 was fractionally higher, and London's FTSE 100 was off 0.2%.