Wall Street set to open little changed; Yellen in focus

By Tanya Agrawal

REUTERS - U.S. stocks looked set to open little changed on Monday as investors awaited a speech by Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, less than a week after the Fed raised interest rates for only the second time since the financial crisis.

Yellen will be speaking on "the State of the Job Market" at 1:30 p.m. ET (1830 GMT) at the University of Baltimore.

U.S. stocks fell on Friday, weighed by a more than 4 percent drop in Oracle shares and news that a Chinese Navy warship seized a U.S. underwater drone.

Still, the Dow posted its sixth straight week of gains, its longest streak in a year. The blue-chip index remains less than 1 percent away from 20,000, a level it has never breached.

U.S. stocks have been on a tear since the Nov. 8 presidential election, with the S&P rising 5.7 percent on bets that President-elect Donald Trump's expected deregulation and infrastructure spending will boost the economy.

However, there are some concerns that the rally may run out of steam as policy will take time to be implemented and will likely change as it makes its way through Congress.

"Although I believe that the market has run a little ahead of itself, as long as there's no bad news, this momentum trade can record new tops," said Hussein Sayed, chief market strategist at FXTM.

"For the rally to be justifiable in the longer run, we require earning expectations to overshoot, and this is still missing from the equation."

Dow e-minis were up 18 points, or 0.09 percent, with 15,028 contracts changing hands at 8:31 a.m. ET.

S&P 500 e-minis were up 1.5 points, or 0.07 percent, with 67,519 contracts traded.

Nasdaq 100 e-minis were up 6.25 points, or 0.13 percent, on volume of 11,512 contracts.

Oil prices were little changed after climbing 2 percent on Friday as a weaker dollar and the delay of new Libyan oil exports boosted benchmarks, amid expectations of tighter crude supply going into 2017. [O/R]

The dollar pulled away from the 14-year high it hit last week on expectations of a faster pace of U.S. monetary tightening as investors booked profits.

Lennar rose 2.9 percent to $44.67 in premarket trading after the second-largest U.S. homebuilder's quarterly profit topped analysts' estimates.

Allied World Assurance was up 9.2 percent at $50.00 after insurance group Fairfax Financial Holdings agreed to buy the Swiss insurer for $4.9 billion.

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