By Niket Nishant and Utkarsh Hathi
Nov 10 (Reuters) - Wall Street's main indexes were on course for a weak open on Tuesday after hotter-than-expected inflation data for October threatened to pause a two-day rebound in tech shares and revive the selling pressure that had rattled markets last week.
Earlier in the day, Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller said the central bank should raise interest rates by at least 25 basis points next month even if inflation cooled in October. If price pressures
accelerated, policymakers should consider a half-percentage-point increase, he said.
Traders are pricing in an almost 99% chance of a hike in December, according to the CME FedWatch tool.
"There are some fears that underlying price pressures are starting to build again. It creates some concern," said James McCann, senior economist at Edward Jones.
"Markets had been pricing out some of the Fed tightening in recent weeks. Now it's probably being forced to contemplate a bit more tightening."
At 8:46 a.m. ET, Dow E-minis were down 13 points, or 0.02%, S&P 500 E-minis lost 39.75 points, or 0.52%, and Nasdaq 100 E-minis fell 288.5 points, or 1.03%.
NVIDIA, ANTHROPIC TEST AI SENTIMENT
Shares of Nvidia, the second-most valuable company in the world, erased their premarket gains and were last down 1.6%.
Jensen Huang's affair with Chinese businesswoman Alice Huang, alleged to be a spy for Beijing, facilitated the shipment of at least $7.5 billion worth of the company's chips through Chinese firms, The Information reported.
As CEO of the company at the heart of the AI boom, Huang's leadership and future at Nvidia are particularly important to investors.
Separately, Anthropic revealed that its initial public offering is expected to raise as much as $64.4 billion, giving the company a fully diluted valuation of up to $1.4 trillion.
The prospectus sets the stage for one of the biggest IPOs on record. A listing by Anthropic could also force other AI heavyweights to compete harder for investor dollars.
"It's come at a little bit of a difficult time with all the concerns around AI and over-investment. Sometimes the subsequent days see a lot of volatility. It stands to be seen how investors feel about another round of AI enthusiasm," said Daniela Hathorn, senior market analyst at Capital.com.
Chips were lower in premarket trading, with Intel and Marvell Technology down 3.6% and 5%, respectively.
Neocloud firm CoreWeave is expected to report quarterly earnings after market close on Tuesday. Questions about the sustainability of the AI boom and the company's debt burden have pressured the stock recently.
A strong performance could help reassure investors about the health of the industry, which SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has said could face consolidation and failures.
Shares of CoreWeave and its peer Nebius fell over 4% each in premarket trading.
Media giant Skydance dropped 1.4% after it announced cost-cutting plans and warned that the underperformance of Warner Bros' film slate would impact fourth-quarter profit by up to $200 million.
Still, cooling oil prices offered some comfort, with Brent crude futures slipping below $90 a barrel for the first time since August.
(Reporting by Niket Nishant and Utkarsh Hathi in Bengaluru; Additional reproting by Johann M Cherian; Editing by Devika Syamnath)
