Before the Bell

With a big casino deal in the works, Wall Street is betting on a good day despite stubbornly high oil prices and more Fed speakers. Stock futures are pointing upward.

The Richmond Fed is releasing its May manufacturing index shortly after the opening bell. Fed chief Ben Bernanke and other officials from the central bank are speaking later today, on the heels of a pronouncement by Chicago Fed President Michael Moskow that inflation is still high, but likely to keep easing as the economy recovers.

U.S. Treasuries are down a bit after bargain-hunting by long-term investors snapped a six-session losing streak yesterday. The dollar is steady against the yen and up against the euro on lower expectations for an interest-rate cut later this year.

Oil prices, whose jump kept the stock market in check yesterday, are still way up there. London Brent is down, but still above $70 a barrel, with support coming from violence in Nigeria. Billionaire Kirk Kerkorian's Tracinda Corp. is entering talks with its majority-owned MGM Mirage to buy the casino operator's lucrative Bellagio property and CityCenter development on the Las Vegas Strip. P.S. - Tracinda is also looking to pursue strategic alternatives for its MGM Mirage stake, and they conceivably could include a sale. Fremont General shares are up after the company announced a deal to sell its commercial real estate lending business to iStar Financial.

Memorial Day weekend, the unofficial start to summer, is approaching, and Yahoo Hot Jobs has taken the opportunity to tell us that almost half of U.S. workers did not take all of their vacation days last year. Let's all try to do better in 2007.

Lisa Von Ahn -Editor
www.reuters.com