U.S. Stock Futures Little Changed After S&P 500 Rally

U.S. stock futures were little changed, after the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index climbed to a five-year high, as euro-area finance ministers prepared to meet to discuss aid to Cyprus and Greece.
Nike Inc. and AOL Inc. gained more than 2 percent after analysts recommended investors buy the shares. Google Inc. declined 0.7 percent as Chairman Eric Schmidt adopted a plan to sell as many as 3.2 million shares in the operator of the world’s most popular search engine.
Futures on the S&P 500 expiring in March added 0.1 percent to 1,513.4 at 8:39 p.m. in New York. The equity benchmark last week reached its highest level since November 2007, completing its longest streak of weekly gains since August. Dow Jones Industrial Average futures advanced 12 points, or 0.1 percent, to 13,938 today.
The Dow “has flirted with 14,000 for the last week and now that the reporting season is winding down, traders will be looking forward to President Obama’s State of the Union address,” David Madden, market analyst at IG in London, wrote in emailed comments.
The S&P 500 has rallied 6.4 percent so far in 2013 as U.S. lawmakers reached a budget compromise and companies reported better-than-estimated earnings. The gauge is about 3 percent below its record high reached in October 2007. It has more than doubled since bottoming in March 2009 as the Federal Reserve conducted three rounds of bond-buying to lower interest rates and boost economic growth.
Euro-Area Crisis
Ministers from the 17-member euro area meet today in Brussels to discuss aid to Cyprus and Greece as concern over the region’s sovereign-debt crisis revives. Group of 20 finance chiefs and central bankers will gather in Moscow on Friday.
In the U.S., President Barack Obama will present his legislative priorities for the year in his annual State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night. The speech is his first State of the Union after being elected to a second term and he is likely to focus on gun control, immigration law and avoiding automatic spending cuts.
Senate Democrats are close to proposing a $120 billion plan for a 10-month delay in the cuts set to begin March 1, according to a Senate Democratic aide. The aide, who asked not to be identified in discussing the proposal, said half of the cost of delaying the across-the-board cuts would be covered by revenue increases and the other half by spending reductions.
Nike, AOL
Nike advanced 2 percent to $55.69. JPMorgan raised its recommendation on the stock to overweight, a rating similar to buy, from neutral. It cited confidence in the sportswear-maker’s ability to focus on profitability and return to double-digit earnings-per-share growth in 2014.
AOL gained 2.3 percent to $34.51 after RBC Capital Markets LLC upgraded its rating on the shares to outperform, the equivalent of buy, from sector perform. The Web publisher that owns the Huffington Post and TechCrunch has rallied 10 percent in February.
Google retreated $5.45 to $779.92. Schmidt’s planned share sales, worth about $2.5 billion, represent 42 percent of his stake in the company. The sales may take place over a maximum period of a year, California-based Google said.