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By Bloomberg

U.S. stock-index futures rose amid takeover activity, after the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index posted its first back-to-back weekly retreat since October.

Foundation Medicine Inc. more than doubled in early New York trading after Roche Holding AG said it will pay more than $1 billion for a majority stake in the maker of cancer genomic tests. NPS Pharmaceuticals Inc. jumped 8.7 percent after Shire Plc agreed to buy the maker of medicines used to treat rare diseases for about $5.2 billion.

Futures on the S&P 500 expiring in March advanced 0.6 percent to 2,046.4 at 6:40 a.m. in New York. The index lost 0.7 percent last week, following a 1.5 percent drop the prior week, amid concern over sliding oil prices, falling U.S. wages and that the European Central Bank’s bond-buying plan won’t be enough to combat deflation. Dow Jones Industrial Average contracts added 92 points, or 0.5 percent, to 17,741, today.

“Markets have been volatile because they still haven’t made up their mind whether lower oil prices are positive for consumers and the overall world economy or whether it means more financial stress,” Otto Waser, chief investment officer at R&A Research & Asset Management AG in Zurich, said by telephone. “This has been the tug of war between the two camps. We think it’ll be positive for consumption. We’re overweight in the U.S. this year.”

Later this week, investors will weigh reports for clues on the health of the world’s largest economy, including retail sales, manufacturing in the New York region and industrial production.

Profit Forecasts

The S&P 500 has fallen 2.2 percent since a record in December amid sliding oil prices. That’s prompted analysts to cut their profit forecasts for companies in the index, with reductions spread across nine of 10 industry groups and energy producers seeing the biggest cut.

Profit at companies in the benchmark gauge probably climbed 2 percent in the final quarter of 2014, and 2.8 percent this period, analysts forecast. That’s down from October estimates of 8.1 percent and 9.2 percent, respectively.

Alcoa Inc. will post fourth-quarter earnings after the market closes today, unofficially kicking off the earnings season. The aluminum producer rose 0.9 percent to $16.25 in premarket trading after Nomura Holdings Inc. recommended investors buy the shares.

Foundation Medicine surged 103 percent to $48.50. Roche will buy 5 million newly issued shares of Foundation for $50 each, then begin an offer for about half of the company’s existing stock for the same price. The offer is 109 percent above Foundation’s closing stock price last week.

NPS Takeover

NPS Pharmaceuticals jumped 8.7 percent to $45.54. Shire will pay $46 a share in cash. That’s a 9.8 percent premium to NPS’s closing price on Jan. 9 and more than 50 percent higher than its close on Dec. 16, before news broke of Shire’s interest.

Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. rallied 5.8 percent to $63.79. The drugmaker said its Opdivo treatment showed better overall survival rates compared with docetaxel, a form of chemotherapy, in a study of patients with a type of lung cancer.

Express Inc. surged 6.9 percent to $15.10. The clothing chain boosted its forecast for fourth-quarter earnings and 2015 profit, saying business strengthened in December and the first week of January.

Schlumberger Ltd., which posts earnings this week, fell 1.4 percent to $80.11. The world’s largest oilfield-services provider was cut to neutral, the equivalent of a hold, from buy at Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

Other energy stocks also retreated after Goldman reduced its forecasts for global benchmark crude prices, predicting inventories will increase over the first half of this year. Transocean Ltd. lost 1.6 percent to $15.85, while Nabors Industries Ltd. and Denbury Resources Inc. also declined.