Wall Street set to open higher as UK election impact limited

By Tanya Agrawal

REUTERS - U.S. stocks looked set to open slightly higher on Friday as the surprise result of the British general election had a limited impact on investor sentiment.

British voters dealt a blow to Prime Minister Theresa May in a snap election, wiping out her parliamentary majority, just weeks before Brexit negotiations are due to begin.

May said she would form a new government with assistance from Northern Irish unionists to provide political certainty.

European stocks were choppy on Friday, with the pan-European STOXX 600 index down 0.3 percent, while UK's blue chip FTSE 100 index gaining 0.5 percent.

Analysts said the impact from the election on the U.S. market would be limited.

"The UK election is a UK event and there is no direct economic impact from that on the U.S. economy," said Steve Blitz, chief U.S. economist at TS Lombard in New York.

"Investors are more concerned about Trump and the perception of what he can and can't get passed legislatively in regards to tax reform. The last thing the Republicans want to do is head to the mid-term election in 2018 without any major legislative accomplishments."

Dow e-minis were up 29 points, or 0.14 percent, with 18,911 contracts changing hands at 8:20 a.m. ET (1220 GMT).

S&P 500 e-minis were up 3.25 points, or 0.13 percent, with 130,681 contracts traded.

Nasdaq 100 e-minis were up 3.25 points, or 0.06 percent, on volume of 24,847 contracts.

Wall Street ended mostly flat on Thursday after former FBI Director James Comey's testimony was seen by investors as having no smoking gun that could affect Donald Trump's presidency.

Comey said Trump fired him to undermine an investigation into Russian meddling into last November's U.S. election and while he had no doubt that Russia interfered with the election, he was confident that no votes had been altered.

The market's concern is whether the Trump administration can put the investigation behind it and revive momentum for its agenda of lower taxes and looser regulations.

Bets on that agenda are partly behind a rally, which has driven stock indexes to record highs.

Shares of Endo International tumbled 12.9 percent to $12 after the FDA asked the drugmaker to withdraw from the market its long-lasting opioid painkiller for public health reasons.

Chipmaker Nvidia rose 2.5 percent to $163.80 after brokerages reiterated their bullish view on the stock.

DuPont Fabros Technology jumped 15.8 percent to $64.14 after Digital Realty Trust said it would buy the fellow data center operator for an enterprise value of about $7.6 billion. Digital was up 1.7 percent.

(Reporting by Tanya Agrawal in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva)