(Reuters) -Wall Street futures ticked higher on Wednesday as investors cheered a possible end to the longest U.S. government shutdown, while an upbeat earnings outlook from Advanced Micro Devices revived optimism around AI.
AMD climbed 4.6% in premarket trading after the chip designer said it expects annual data center chip revenue of $100 billion within the next five years, and earnings to more than triple.
U.S. stocks came under pressure early on Tuesday after news that Japanese technology investor SoftBank Group had sold its stake in Nvidia and a forecast cut from AI cloud services provider CoreWeave raised concerns about rapidly growing valuations among tech companies.
However, the indexes cut losses as the session wore on and the blue-chip Dow closed at a record high.
At 5:44 a.m. ET, Dow E-minis were up 53 points, or 0.11%, S&P 500 E-minis were up 19 points, or 0.28% and Nasdaq 100 E-minis were up 139.75 points, or 0.55%.
Members of the House of Representatives headed back to Washington on Tuesday after a recess for a vote that could reopen the government and restore stability to air travel and food subsidies.
The vote is due to take place on Wednesday afternoon on a compromise that would restore funding to government agencies, with President Donald Trump expected to sign it into law.
The 42-day long closure has weighed on the economy. In the absence of government-collected data, both the Federal Reserve and traders have looked to private economic indicators to gauge the economic impact.
“The eventual unlocking of the U.S. government shutdown will likely offer another round of upside for US stocks, which will spill over to Europe and Asia,” said Daniela Hathorn, senior market analyst at Capital.com.
“However, the markets could be in for a shock when the build-up of data gets released, possibly rocking market confidence a little bit if (it) paints a worse picture than anticipated.”
Tuesday’s weekly update of ADP’s preliminary payroll figures pointed to continued weakness in the labor market, with private employers shedding an average of 11,250 jobs a week for the four weeks ending October 25.
Traders are currently pricing in a 63% probability of a 25-basis-point reduction at December’s monetary policy meeting, according to CME Group’s FedWatch tool.
With the third-quarter earnings season slowly winding down, 82% of 446 companies in the S&P 500 have reported their profits above analyst expectations compared to a long-term average of 67%, according to LSEG data.
AI bellwether Nvidia’s earnings next week could test the optimism around the technology which has driven markets to record highs this year, but come under more scrutiny in recent weeks.
Among other moves, U.S.-listed shares of Tencent Music Entertainment Group added 3% after quarterly results.
BILL Holdings jumped 12.9% after sources told Reuters that the payments firm was exploring a sale.
(Reporting by Twesha Dikshit in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel)
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