Wall Street braces for M&A Monday

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Stocks are set for an uneven start Monday as investors try to sort through a slew merger-and-acquisition deals in the first full trading week of 2007.

At 8:19 a.m. ET, Nasdaq and S&P futures were higher. But markets looked to open mixed after fair value was considered.

"There's lots of positive momentum because of the M&A activity going on," said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at Jefferies & Co.

Overall, "there's more good news than bad news," Hogan said, "I expect the market to open pretty strongly."

In merger news, Caremark Rx (Charts) said Sunday it rejected a $26 billion takeover bid from Express Scripts (Charts), in favor of a $22.2 billion offer from CVS (Charts).

And General Electric (Charts) is poised to buy Vetco Gray, a Houston-based equipment supplier to the oil and gas industries, for roughly $1.9 billion, according to a report.

Also in the energy sector, Houston Exploration (Charts) said Sunday it reached an agreement to be acquired by Forest Oil (Charts) for nearly $1.5 billion in cash and stock.

In other corporate news, Goldman Sachs downgraded retail giant Wal-Mart (Charts) to "neutral" from "buy."

The Wall Street Journal said Northrop Grumman (Charts) has threatened to shun a competition against Boeing (Charts) for the U.S. Air Force's aerial refueling tanker program because of concerns over bidding rules.

General Motors (Charts) got a boost by sweeping the North American International Auto Show's car and truck of the year awards for the first time in the company's history.

The auto show in Detroit is one of three major trade shows producing headlines this week. In addition, the Consumer Electronics Show is getting underway in Las Vegas and the MacWorld Expo, which will feature the latest Apple (Charts) products, takes place in San Francisco.

In an interview ahead of his keynote speech at the Consumer Electronics Show, Microsoft (Charts) Chairman Bill Gates said shipments of Xbox 360 video game console beat its target of 10 million at the end of 2006.

Oil rebounded from last week's sharp selloff, with U.S. crude futures up 71 cents to $57.02 a barrel in electronic trading.

On the economic front, investors will be paying attention to November's consumer credit report due out later in the session.

Treasury prices slipped, with the 10-year note yield rising to 4.66 percent from 4.64 percent late Friday.

In currency trading, the dollar jumped versus the euro and was lower versus the yen.

Stocks ended lower in Asia and European shares were higher in midday trade.

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