By Johann M Cherian and Pranav Kashyap
(Reuters) -U.S. stock index futures ticked higher on Wednesday, as Wall Street priced in a possible Federal Reserve rate cut in December and braced for fresh economic data that could provide greater clarity on the health of the world’s largest economy.
Wall Street’s main indexes notched a third consecutive gain on Tuesday, with the benchmark S&P 500 closing at a two-week high as fresh signs of cooling consumer demand stoked bets that the Federal Reserve could soon start cutting borrowing costs.
Investors will parse data from weekly jobless claims for the week ending November 22 and a delayed September durable goods report, scheduled for 8:30 a.m. ET. The central bank’s snapshot of economic conditions, the Beige Book, is due at 2 p.m. ET.
“Tuesday’s data isn’t awful, but soft enough to enable the Federal Reserve to consider easing rates further, even if just as a precautionary measure in case the labor market has deteriorated further in the past few months,” said Daniela Hathorn, senior market analyst at Capital.com.
Recent dovish signals from key Federal Reserve officials had already added to the odds of a 25-basis-point rate cut next month to 84.9%, roughly double last week’s chances, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch Tool.
At 07:05 a.m. ET, Dow E-minis were up 32 points, or 0.07%, S&P 500 E-minis were up 11.5 points, or 0.17%, and Nasdaq 100 E-minis were up 63.25 points, or 0.25%.
Investors were also weighing a report suggesting White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett was a frontrunner to be the next Fed Chair, at a time when political influence in monetary policymaking has been a concern.
Wall Street’s recent recovery from a tech-led selloff earlier this month has trimmed monthly losses on the main indexes. It would still be their biggest monthly losses since the U.S. tariff rout earlier this year.
However, tech overvaluations still remain a concern and the S&P 500 technology index has borne the brunt of it with a 6% monthly decline.
Lifting some of the gloom on Wednesday was a 2.9% rise in Dell in premarket trading after its quarterly forecasts surpassed expectations, supported by strong demand for its servers in AI data centers.
Traders were also heading into a busy holiday shopping period starting with the Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday, followed by Black Friday and Cyber Monday. The period will be crucial for big-box retailers that will be catering to customers navigating tariff-induced price pressures and corporate layoffs.
Results and forecasts from retailers such as Walmart and Target have been mixed even as the National Retail Federation expects this year’s holiday sales to top $1 trillion for the first time.
Among other stocks, HP
Signs of increasing competition in the AI-chip sector following an Alphabet-Meta deal weighed on shares of Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices, down over 1% each. Alphabet’s shares were up 1.3%, bringing it close to a $4 trillion market valuation.
(Reporting by Johann M Cherian and Pranav Kashyap in Bengaluru; Editing by Krishna Chandra Eluri)
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