US stock futures soared amid Fed chairman race

U.S. stock-index futures and Treasuries rose, and the dollar fell, after Lawrence Summers withdrew from the race to be the next Federal Reserve chairman.

Standard & Poor’s 500 Index futures expiring in December added 1.1% to 1,700.3 at 6:02 a.m. in New York. Dow Jones industrial Average also jumped 1.1%. Ten-year Treasury yields dropped seven basis points, or 0.07 percentage point, to 2.82%, according to Bloomberg Bond Trader data.

“Investors are saying that QE may not be as aggressively dialed back under Yellen, who is now the front-runner,” Walter “Bucky” Hellwig, who helps manage $17 billion at B&T Wealth Management in Birmingham, Alabama, said in a telephone interview for Bloomberg. “QE is still a very important factor in the minds of investors and we can see this in the potential movement of the stock and bond markets.”

The Federal Open Market Committee will conclude a two-day policy meeting on Wednesday and strategists say markets are now pricing in a decision for the Fed to begin scaling back its monthly $85 billion bond purchases. The consensus view is for the Fed to pare back that program by $15 billion a month, an amount that may allow markets to keep rallying.

“Summers had been seen as a person who can add volatility to the market given his bias toward more aggressive tightening, should he take up the Fed chairmanship,” Gary Dugan, the Singapore-based chief investment officer for Asia and the Middle East at Coutts & Co., said in a telephone interview. “This brings Janet Yellen to the forefront and the consensus is she’ll build a follow-through of Bernanke’s policies.”

Others say the meeting could surprise this week, pushing out a tapering to October or December.

Economic data on the calendar for Monday includes the September Empire State index at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time, and industrial production and capacity utilization for August at 9:15 a.m. Eastern.