US STOCKS-Wall St set for muted open after financial-driven rally

By Purvi Agarwal and Nikhil Sharma

Jan 6 (Reuters) - Wall Street was set for a muted open on Tuesday, as investors took a breather after the main indexes posted their biggest intraday gains in weeks in the previous session, while markets braced for a data-heavy week of labor reports.

A rally in financial stocks was the main driver of robust gains on Wall Street on Monday that sent the blue-chip Dow to a record high. The Dow is about 2% away from the historic 50,000 mark.

Energy companies provided a boost as well, and were largely in the spotlight after U.S. military forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro over the weekend. Investors bet the move could allow U.S. firms access to Venezuelan oil reserves.

U.S. President Donald Trump's administration plans to meet executives from oil companies later this week to discuss boosting production in Venezuela.

In premarket trading on Tuesday, oil firms stabilized, with SLB SLB.N rising 1.4%, and giants Exxon Mobil XOM.N and Chevron CVX.N were up 0.2% and 1%, respectively.

"There's a lot of retooling that would need to get done to get these downstream producers ready for this type of crude oil. It could be done - and it probably will be. How long ... how much investment it will take, and who makes that investment are still the big questions," said Mark Malek, chief investment officer at Siebert Financial.

At 8:24 a.m. ET, Dow E-minis YMcv1 were down 38 points, or 0.08%, S&P 500 E-minis EScv1 were up 3 points, or 0.04% and Nasdaq 100 E-minis NQcv1 were up 53.5 points, or 0.21%.

Investors were watching for a "Santa Claus rally" — a seasonal pattern in which stocks often get a late boost over the last five trading days of December and the first two of January, according to the Stock Trader's Almanac — but the S&P 500 was flat over that span this year.

This week, a series of labor market data will be on investors' radar, including December's crucial nonfarm payrolls numbers on Friday that can influence the Federal Reserve's monetary policy path.

The dataset commands renewed importance after Fed Chair Jerome Powell urged caution against further reductions at the central bank's December meeting until there was more clarity on the health of the labor market.

The final reading of S&P Global's business activity survey for December will be parsed.

Among stocks, Vistra VST.N gained 4.5% before the bell after announcing a deal to buy Cogentrix Energy from Quantum Capital Group for about $4.7 billion.

Intel INTC.O rose 1.2% as the chipmaker launched Panther Lake, its new AI chip for laptops, marking its first product made using its next-generation manufacturing process called 18A.

Microchip Technology MCHP.O gained 3.9% after raising expectations for its third-quarter net sales on Monday.