S&P 500 and Nasdaq futures rose in a record-breaking Wall Street rally on Wednesday, on continued strength in heavily weighted stocks, with Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s remarks and crucial inflation prints set to offer more direction this week.
AI-chip favourite Nvidia (NVDA) climbed 1.1% in premarket trading, after hitting a near three-week high in the previous session.
Other chip stocks including Arm Holdings and Micron Technology gained around 1% each, with U.S.-listed shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, climbing 2% after its second-quarter revenue handily beat estimates.
All the so-called “Magnificent Seven” stocks were trading higher, with U.S. Treasury yields falling. Meta Platforms (META), Apple (AAPL), Alphabet (GOOG) and Microsoft (MSFT) were up around 0.4% each.
Tesla (TSLA), too, edged up 0.5% after HSBC hiked its price target on the EV maker’s stock, which clocked its longest winning streak of 10 sessions this year on Tuesday.
The group of seven stocks has been the main force behind Wall Street’s banner rally this year, while the broader market has lagged, leading some market watchers to question the sustainability of equity gains and call for greater diversification.
The benchmark S&P 500 closed at an all-time high for the fifth straight session on Tuesday, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq notched its sixth record closing high after hopes for an interest-rate cut in September received a boost from Jerome Powell, who said the U.S. was “no longer an overheated economy”.
However, as expected, Powell refrained from committing to a timeline for rate cuts in his testimony to Congress. He is slated to appear before the House Financial Services Committee at 10 a.m. ET for further questioning from lawmakers.
“We believe Powell is happy with keeping markets relatively quiet at this stage as some data starts to go in the right direction, we did read a still modestly dovish bias in Powell’s testimony, as he kept adding emphasis on the risks of unduly weakening activity and employment,” analysts at ING said in a note.
Bets on a 25-basis-point rate cut by September have hovered around 70% for the past week, up from 45% a month ago, according to CME’s FedWatch. Comments from Fed officials Austan Goolsbee, Michelle Bowman and Lisa Cook are also expected through the day.
Attention will now shift to U.S. inflation data this week, with the Consumer Price Index due on Thursday and the Producer Price Index report on Friday.
The second-quarter earnings season, which kicks off this week with major banks due to report on Friday, will be a key test for whether high-flying megacaps can justify expensive valuations and continue their strong runs.
At 7:26 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis were down 4 points, or 0.01%, S&P 500 e-minis were up 8 points, or 0.14%, and Nasdaq 100 e-minis were up 55.25 points, or 0.27%.
Gene-sequencing equipment maker Illumina jumped 3.7% on plans to acquire privately held Fluent BioSciences.
Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company gained 2% after a report that Japan’s Yokohama Rubber was in talks to buy its off-road tire business for at least $1 billion.
Source: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/futures-higher-nvidia-other-megacaps-103349657.html
