Data light US agenda this afternoon as stock divergence rules for the Dow Jones

As noted here many times since early yesterday, the US stock markets were not open on Monday, but they will resume live trading this afternoon. On Friday it was a diverse set of closes for the major US indexes and one where only the Dow Jones closed lower to any degree. Well, since then things have turned around in the US futures and right now we have potential record openings likely for the S+P 500 and the Nasdaq 100 indexes, where the Dow Jones is not anywhere close to replicating that. The index closed at 44,546 on Friday, with a loss of 165 points on the session. It is priced to open modestly higher this afternoon, currently around 44,600. There is one data point which might add, or detract from that outlook and that is the latest Empire manufacturing index (New York region). This is forecast to show an improvement in February. It is expected to come in at -2, from -12.6 in January. Look, this index does not always have much of an impact, but any kind of major surprise in the data and it might. We shall see if that is the case at 1.30pm GMT