Wall Street pointed higher early Tuesday ahead of another heavy day of corporate earnings reports. And the Federal Reserve opens its two-day meeting to determine where to go with interest rates.
Futures for the S&P 500 rose 0.3% before the bell, while futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average were up 0.2%. Futures for the technology-heavy Nasdaq gained 0.4%.
General Motors, citing a “technology-driven strategy,” will move its stock listing to the
Nasdaq after 115 years on the New York Stock Exchange. Shares of GM jumped 2.8% before markets opened. The company began trading on the NYSE in 1911.
Its shares are expected to begin trading on the Nasdaq in mid-November.
Shares of Coca-Cola inched up less than 1% after the beverage giant beat analysts' sales and profit targets. UPS also reported better-than-expected profit on Tuesday and raised its guidance. UPS shares were up 1.5% before the opening bell.
Profit reports from huge tech companies this week could offer more details about how spending on AI is going, and whether it’s producing the profits and productivity that proponents promised.
Anthropic, one of the key players of the AI boom, gave details Monday about how much money it’s losing as it prepares to sell its stock on the publicly traded U.S. market for the first time.
That boosted chip stocks on Monday and it appeared those gains would carry over into Tuesday.
Nvidia rose almost 1%, Broadcom and Micron were both up 2.4% and Intel gained 1.5% in premarket trading.
Some stocks in the artificial-intelligence industry remained unsettled. They’ve been volatile due to the soaring cost of borrowing money needed to build data centers and buy more AI chips.
Alphabet and Microsoft will report their latest quarterly results on Wednesday, with Amazon to follow on Thursday.
The Fed opens its two-day meeting in Washington Tuesday, where officials will gather to decide whether to raise its benchmark lending rate again after raising it last month for the first time in three years. Central bank officials bumped the Fed funds rate up in hopes of slowing inflation, which has remained well above their 2% target for years.
Rising gas prices triggered by the war in Iran could further raise costs across the economy. Diesel fuel reached an all-time high of $6.53 a gallon in late September, and was going for $6.35 Tuesday, an increase of about 74% compared with this time last year.
High diesel costs raise the price of shipping groceries, cars, and nearly everything else. Businesses eventually pass on the costs to consumers, spreading inflation to more parts of the economy.
However, after last month's hike, few economists expect another one this week.
In energy markets Tuesday, Brent crude oil, the international standard, ticked down 78 cents to $109.96 a barrel. U.S. benchmark crude slipped 66 cents to $101.10 per barrel.
In Europe at midday, Germany’s DAX rose 0.3%, the CAC 40 in Paris jumped 0.4% and Britain’s FTSE 100 tumbled 0.8%.
Asian shares mostly gained as benchmarks in Tokyo and Seoul were lifted by buying of AI-related stocks.
South Korea’s Kospi briefly gained more than 4% and closed 3.1% higher, at 5,638.34. Computer chipmaker SK Hynix rallied 5.2% and Samsung Electronics gained 4.2%.
SK Hynix is set to release its third-quarter earnings Wednesday, a day before rival Samsung Electronics reports its results. Samsung has estimated its operating profit for the last quarter will be up nearly eight-fold from a year earlier.
Strong global demand for semiconductors is driving strong growth, and the South Korean economy expanded at a better-than-expected 3.4% annual rate in July-September, according to data released Tuesday.
Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 added 1.7% to 63,268.37. Testing equipment maker Advantest jumped 9.6% and OpenAI investor SoftBank Group climbed 5%.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng gave up early gains, slipping 0.7% to 23,041.32, while the Shanghai Composite dropped 1.3% to 3,648.30.
Traders were watching for any major announcements from a closed-door meeting in Beijing of top leaders of China’s ruling Communist Party.
Taiwan’s Taiex rose 0.1%. India’s Sensex slipped 0.5%.
In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 advanced 0.5% to 8,852.10.
