(Reuters) – U.S. stock index futures rose on Wednesday ahead of monthly inflation data, which is likely to offer investors clues on how aggressively the Federal Reserve could raise interest rates.
The Labor Department report, due at 8:30 a.m. ET, is likely to show that consumer price increased at a slower pace in April, cooling to 0.2% in April from 1.2% in March.
After the 50-basis point rate hike by an increasingly hawkish Federal Reserve, markets have gyrated wildly ahead of this week’s data, which will be closely parsed for signs that inflation is peaking.
Recent comments from Fed officials have backed a series of half-percentage-point rate increases, although traders see a 73% chance that the central bank will hike by 75 basis points at the June meeting.
“A soft inflation read will come as a relief that the Federal Reserve’s efforts to tame inflation started paying off, and that the Fed doesn’t need to get much more aggressive to bring inflation back towards its 2% policy target,” said Ipek Ozkardeskaya, senior analyst at Swissquote Bank.
“If, however, inflation hasn’t pulled lower as expected – and worse, if we see a higher figure than last month print, we would see another big wave of selloff across all assets.”
The tech-heavy Nasdaq closed higher on Tuesday but remains close to an 18-month low hit earlier this week after megacap growth stocks fell sharply due to worries about rising rates denting future cash flows.
At 06:59 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis were up 267 points, or 0.83%, S&P 500 e-minis were up 44 points, or 1.1%, and Nasdaq 100 e-minis were up 178.5 points, or 1.45%.
Offering support to equities, U.S. Treasury yields extended their declines from recent highs, with the yield on 10-year notes falling below 3%. [US/]
High-growth stocks such as Tesla Inc, Amazon.com, Microsoft Corp, Meta Platforms, Apple Inc and Google owner-Alphabet Inc gained between 1.6% and 2% in premarket trading.
Coinbase Global Inc fell 13.9% after first-quarter revenue missed estimates amid a turmoil in global markets which has curbed investor appetite for risk assets.
(Reporting by Amruta Khandekar in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur)
