Stock Futures Rise and Tesla Surges as a New Trading Year Begins

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Stock futures were rising Monday, suggesting Wall Street would kick off the first trading day of 2022 with gains.

Contracts linked to the

Dow Jones Industrial Average
rose 127 points, or 0.35%, to 36,353,

S&P 500
futures rose 0.37% and

Nasdaq
futures gained 0.42%.

Asian shares closed Monday’s session mixed while European stocks edged higher in early trading. Markets in China, Japan and the U.K. were closed for holidays.

Shares of

Tesla

(ticker: TSLA), the electric vehicle company, rose 7% in premarket trading Monday after posting deliveries of 308,600 vehicles in the fourth quarter, a record.

Stock markets are coming off a stellar 2021 — the S&P 500 finished up 27% — with investors once again factoring in what effect the spread of the Omicron variant of Covid-19 would have on global growth. The virus has led to staff shortages at airlines, forcing thousands of flight cancellations, while

Goldman Sachs

(GS) has joined other Wall Street banks asking employees to work from home for the first few weeks of January.

Brad McMillan, chief investment officer for Commonwealth Financial Network, expects that in 2022 “things will return to as close as we are going to get to the pre-pandemic normal.

“We will get Covid under control. We will get back to full employment. And we will get back sustainable growth. We’re not there yet, but we’ve made substantial progress. Based on everything we can see from here, that progress will continue,” McMillan said.

The first week of the year will bring the release of the minutes from the last Federal Open Market Committee meeting. Investors will focus closely on the minutes to gauge the Federal Reserve’s plans to raise interest rates to cool the rapid rise of inflation. Many analysts predict the central bank could raise rates as soon as March.

Write to Joe Woelfel at joseph.woelfel@barrons.com