Tesla, Merck, Moderna: What to Watch When the Stock Market Opens Today

Stock futures edged down as investors kept on eye on the multiple quarrels over government spending taking place on Capitol Hill. Here’s what we’re watching before Monday’s trading begins.

• Tesla

  overcame snarled global supply chains to deliver a record number of vehicles in the third quarter. The Silicon Valley electric-vehicle maker’s shares climbed 3% premarket.

• Merck

  shares were up 4.1% premarket. Last week, the drug maker said its pill intended to treat Covid-19 had succeeded in a key study.

• Shares of some vaccine makers were extending declines premarket after having dropped last week following the report on Merck’s pill.

  Moderna

  was down 5% and

  Novavax

  shed 6.4%.

• General Motors

  shares jumped 3.6% ahead of the bell. The auto maker said early Monday that struck a supplier agreement with Wolfspeed, marking the company’s initial shift to using silicon carbide for electric-vehicle power electronics.

• Automotive safety electronics maker

  Veoneer

  jumped 3.7%.

  Qualcomm

  and SSW Partners struck a deal to buy Veoneer for $37 a share.

• Shares of

  Amplify Energy

  lost more than half their value in premarket trading Monday after a major oil spill at the company’s platform off the coast of Orange County, Calif., over the weekend.

• Southwest Airlines

  shares gained 2.1% premarket.

  Barclays

  upgraded its rating of the stock and lifted its price target to $75 a share. It closed Friday at $54.35.

• DuPont

  was up 2.7%, having also received a ratings upgrade, from JPMorgan. The bank also nudged its price target up to $85 a share from $84.

• 3M

  shares meanwhile received a ratings downgrade from JPMorgan, and the stock was trading down 1.4% premarket.

• Wine producer

  Duckhorn Portfolio

  and

  Comtech Telecommunications

  are among the companies reporting earnings Monday.

Chart of the Day

• A quirky corner of the U.S. stock market home to cannabis sellers, cryptocurrency trusts and other speculative investments is seeing record levels of activity.

Write to James Willhite at [email protected]

Copyright ©2021 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8