(Reuters) – U.S. stock index futures rose on Thursday as a strong sales forecast from Nvidia boosted chipmakers, helping outweigh worries about the Federal Reserve continuing to raise interest rates in the face of sticky inflation and economic strength.
Nvidia Corp surged 9.6% in premarket trading after the chip designer forecast quarterly sales above estimates and reported a surge in the use of its chips to power artificial intelligence services, such as chatbots.
Shares of Broadcom Inc, Qualcomm Inc, Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc rose between 1.7% and 3.9%.
At 07:21 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis were up 99 points, or 0.3%, S&P 500 e-minis were up 21 points, or 0.53%, and Nasdaq 100 e-minis were up 112.5 points, or 0.93%.
The benchmark S&P 500 closed lower on Wednesday after minutes from the central bank’s Jan. 31-Feb. 1 meeting showed nearly all policymakers supported more rate hikes but agreed that the shift to smaller-sized hikes would let them calibrate better with incoming data.
After a strong January, stock markets have run into a volatile patch as evidence of inflation running above the Fed’s 2% target, a resilient economy and hawkish commentary by central bank officials fanned concerns about further rate hikes.
Those concerns will be at the back of traders’ minds as they peruse remarks from Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic and San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly later in the day.
The second reading of fourth-quarter gross domestic product (GDP) and weekly jobless claims data are also due.
Analysts polled by Reuters predict a correction within the next three months even though they expect the S&P 500 to climb 5% by year-end.
Among stock, eBay Inc slid 5.2% after warning of dour demand in the first half of 2023 due to strained consumer spending domestically and in Europe.
(Reporting by Johann M Cherian in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D’Souza)
