(Reuters) – U.S. stock index futures edged up on Thursday as Treasury yields slipped from multi-year highs, offering some relief to growth and technology stocks battered this week by concerns around a more hawkish Federal Reserve.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq shed nearly 4.5% over the past two sessions after comments from U.S. central bank policymakers and minutes from the Fed’s March meeting suggested rapid interest rates hikes and aggressive trimming of balance sheet assets at a time of surging inflation.
Minutes released on Wednesday showed that Fed officials “generally agreed” to cut up to $95 billion a month from the central bank’s asset holdings even as the war in Ukraine tempered the first U.S. interest rate increase since 2018.
However, sentiment in equity markets was much calmer on Thursday as two-year bond yield slipped. [US/]
Megacap growth shares, whose valuations stand to be pressured by higher bond yields, like Tesla Inc, Meta Platforms Inc, Apple Inc, Amazon.com Inc, Alphabet Inc and Microsoft Corp recovered between 0.5% and 2.2% in premarket trading.
At 07:09 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis were up 91 points, or 0.26%, S&P 500 e-minis were up 19.5 points, or 0.44%, and Nasdaq 100 e-minis were up 95.25 points, or 0.66%.
Among other stocks, HP Inc jumped 13.9% after billionaire Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc disclosed that it had purchased nearly 121 million shares of the personal computing and printing company.
Levi Strauss & Co gained 3.3% after its quarterly results beat Wall Street estimates, helped by price increases and strong demand for its jeans, tops and jackets.
Investors closely watched the ongoing war in Ukraine as Washington announced new sanctions on Wednesday. European Union envoys are set to approve on a ban on Russian coal that would take full effect from mid-August, a month later than initially planned, Reuters reported.
In economic news, a Labor Department report, due at 8:30 a.m. ET, is expected to show that initial claims for state unemployment benefits decreased 2,000 to a seasonally adjusted 200,000 for the week ended April 2.
(Reporting by Bansari Mayur Kamdar in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)
