Tuesday’s stock-market pullback is looking like it may be an aberration.
Stock futures are pointing higher early Wednesday, a day after major indexes snapped a three-session streak of record closing highs. Futures associated with the Nasdaq and S&P 500 are up 0.3% and 0.2%, respectively, while those tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average are fractionally higher.
On Tuesday, the tech-heavy Nasdaq, benchmark S&P 500, and blue-chip Dow closed down 1%, 0.6%, and 0.2%, respectively. The Dow and S&P 500 had set fresh intraday records soon after the opening bell before retreating, with equities investors possibly unnerved that Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said stocks were “fairly highly valued” in his first comments since the central bank last week cut interest rates for the first time this year.
Shares of tech giants Amazon (AMZN) and Nvidia (NVDA) were the two worst performers in the Dow yesterday, but both were rebounding in premarket trading, up nearly 2% and 1%, respectively.
Nvidia partner Micron Technology (MU) stock was up about 1%, paring overnight gains, after the memory-chip maker posted record quarterly sales, boosted by surging demand for artificial intelligence hardware. U.S.-listed shares of Chinese tech giant Alibaba (BABA) soared nearly 10% premarket after it raised its budget for AI infrastructure and models.
Lithium Americas (LAC) shares skyrocketed 60% on a report the Trump administration is looking to take a stake in the company, which is partnering with General Motors (GM) on a Nevada lithium mine. GM shares advanced 3%.
Gold futures, which set another record high early Wednesday, pulled back 0.5% to trade just below $3,800 an ounce. West Texas Intermediate futures, the U.S. crude oil benchmark, was up 1% at about $64 per barrel.
The 10-year Treasury yield, which affects borrowing costs on a variety of consumer and commercial loans, was near flat at 4.11%. Bitcoin was up 1% to nearly $113,000. The U.S. dollar index, which tracks the value of the greenback against a basket of foreign currencies and hit its lowest level since early 2022 one week ago, rose 0.5% to 97.71.