#Stocks bounce as Wall Street braces for Election Day

US stocks were set to rebound from a week of deep losses on Monday as investors prepared for Tuesday’s contentious presidential election.

Futures contracts tied to the Dow Jones industrial average climbed 445.00 points, or about 1.7 percent, to 26,839.00 as of 6:49 a.m. after fears about surging coronavirus infections around the world drove the blue-chip index to its worst week since March.

Futures for the benchmark S&P 500 index were similarly up 1.4 percent as of 6:50 a.m., while futures on the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 were up roughly 1.2 percent, putting Wall Street on pace to follow gains in global markets after the opening bell.

Monday’s boost appeared fueled by strong economic data from China showing that country’s manufacturing activity expanding for the eighth straight month in October. That counterbalanced market jitters after Germany, France and the UK brought back lockdowns to control the spread of the deadly coronavirus.

But investors are also bracing for all the uncertainty that Election Day could bring. Joe Biden is ahead of President Trump nationally but the race is tighter in key battleground states, raising the possibility that a winner won’t be determined for days or weeks as election officials count large numbers of mail-in ballots cast amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

“A couple of fund manager surveys floating around the markets still have ‘contested election’ right up there with ‘COVID-19’ as the most significant market risks right now,” said Stephen Innes, chief global market strategist at Axi. “The nervousness in asset markets going into Tuesday makes sense.”

Oil prices, however, took a hit Monday as the new lockdowns fueled concerns about demand for energy falling further. Prices for West Texas Intermediate crude oil dropped about 2.6 percent to $34.84 a barrel as of 6:51 a.m., while Brent crude was recently down about 2.2 percent at $37.12 a barrel.

With Post wires