@@ -1,1 +1,1 @@ - +<br>By Devik Jain and Anisha Sircar<br> <br>June 21 (Reuters) - U.S.<br>stock indexes were set to open higher on Tuesday as investors returned from a long weekend to scoop up shares of megacap growth companies and banks that were hammered in a rout last week on worries over a global economic downturn.<br> <br>Each of the three major Wall Street indexes fell for the third week in a row in volatile trading and the S&amp;P 500 on Friday suffered its biggest weekly percentage drop since March 2020 following the Federal Reserve's largest interest rate hike in nearly three decades.<br> <br>Markets have priced in aggressive rate hikes in July and September to battle surging inflation amid [https://www.behance.net/search/projects/?sort=appreciations&time=week&search=growing%20doubts growing doubts] if the Fed can engineer a soft landing for the economy and avoid a recession.<br> <br>[https://www.britannica.com/search?query=Goldman%20Sachs Goldman Sachs] now expects a 30% chance of the U.S.<br><br>economy tipping into recession over the next year, up from its previous forecast of 15%.<br> <br>"The market already in a sense may have priced in a shallow recession... you had negative GDP in Q1, so it is possible that the second quarter is negative, in which case the recession could potentially be in the rear-view mirror," said Thomas Hayes, managing member of Great Hill Capital in New York.<br> <br>All eyes are now on Fed Chair Jerome Powell's testimony to the Senate Banking Committee on Wednesday for clues on future interest rate hikes.<br> <br>"The only thing that is keeping (Fed) hawkish is they don't have any data to lean on to stop being so hawkish," Hayes said.<br> <br>At 8:34 a.m.<br><br>ET, Dow e-minis were up 438 points, or 1.47%, S&amp;P 500 e-minis were up 60.5 points, or 1.65%, and Nasdaq 100 e-minis were up 188.25 points, or 1.67%.<br> <br>The S&amp;P 500 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq are in bear market, with the benchmark down 23.4% from its record closing high on Jan. 3.<br>Markets were closed on Monday for Juneteenth holiday.<br> <br>Megacap technology and growth stocks Microsoft Corp , Meta Platforms, [https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/windowspartner Apple] Inc, Alphabet Inc, Amazon.com and Tesla Inc rose between 1.5% and 3% in premarket trading.<br> <br>Citigroup added 2.3% to lead gains among big banks.<br> <br>Kellogg Co climbed 6.7% after the breakfast cereal maker said it was splitting itself into three separate companies, with a focus on snacking, North American cereal and plant-based businesses.<br> <br>Spirit Airlines jumped 8.5% as JetBlue Airways sweetened its bid to convince the ultra-low cost carrier to accept its offer over rival Frontier Airlines' proposal.<br> <br>Lennar Corp rose 2.4% after the homebuilder reported upbeat quarterly revenue and profit, helped by a 14% jump in deliveries, higher home prices and strong demand.<br> <br>The CBOE Volatility index, also known as Wall Street's fear gauge, was down to 30.45 points, its lowest level since June 16.<br><br>(Reporting by Devik Jain and Anisha Sircar in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila and Arun Koyyur)<br><br>adverts.addToArray({"pos":"inread_player"})Advertisement