United States stock futures ticked higher on Wednesday evening (Thursday AEDT) as investors awaited November consumer price index (CPI) data, with markets coming off a fourth straight session of losses.
By 10:50 am AEDT (11:50 pm GMT) Dow futures ticked up 0.2%, S&P futures gained 0.2%, and Nasdaq 100 futures lifted 0.3%.
In after-hours trading, shares of Micron Technology surged 7.2% after the semiconductor group beat expectations on both revenue and earnings for its fiscal first quarter and issued a strong outlook.
Attention is now firmly focused on Thursday’s release of the November consumer price index. It will be the first consumer inflation report published since the U.S. government shutdown ended last month.
Markets expect headline inflation to rise 3.1% year on year.
The futures moves followed a negative trading session for U.S. equities, with losses driven by renewed selling in major semiconductor stocks linked to the artificial intelligence trade.
Both the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average recorded their fourth consecutive daily decline, while the Nasdaq Composite underperformed, falling 1.8%.
During the session, Oracle shares slid more than 5% after the Financial Times reported that the cloud infrastructure company’s primary investor had withdrawn from financing its proposed $10 billion data centre in Michigan.
Although Oracle disputed the report, concerns about the high capital intensity of large-scale data centre projects unsettled investors.
The weakness spilled across the chip sector, with Broadcom falling 4.5%, while Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices also ended the day lower.
