Wall Street was poised to open with solid gains Wednesday as a busy slate of corporate earnings reports overshadowed recent concerns over souring U.S.-China trade relations.
Futures for the S&P 500 rose
0.6% before the bell, while futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.4% and Nasdaq futures picked up 0.7%.
The Russell 2000 Index, which tracks the smallest publicly traded U.S. companies, is hovering near record highs with talk of potential interest rate cuts from Fed Chair Jerome Powell this week fueling the rise. Futures for the Russell 2000 rose 1% to 2,535 in premarket.
Gold rose to new highs, hitting $4,217 per ounce at one point overnight. The precious metal has soared nearly 60% in 2025 as investors seek a hedge against a long list of uncertainties, including higher tariffs and the economy.
Bank of America jumped 4.8% after it reported that its third-quarter profit jumped 23% from a year ago, to $8.5 billion. The Charlotte, North Carolina bank said its results were boosted by strong loan and deposit growth and record net interest income.
Papa John's soared on media reports that private equity group Apollo Global Management offered to take the pizza maker private for $64 per share. Papa John's shares climbed close to 13% before markets opened Wednesday, to about $55 each.
Markets have swung between gains and losses since Friday, when tit-for-tat trade threats between President Donald Trump and China heated up again.
However, some optimism returned Tuesday afternoon when Powell signaled that Fed officials are slightly more worried about the job market than inflation, raising expectations that the central bank will come through with another rate hike.
“Rising downside risks to employment have shifted our assessment of the balance of risks,” he said at a meeting of the National Association of Business Economics in Philadelphia.
Traders took heart from his words, given the lack of fresh data due to the U.S. government shutdown, “reading Powell like a haiku — every pause, every syllable weighed for hidden meaning,” Stephen Innes of SPI Asset Management said in a commentary.
“The message, once decoded, was clear enough: two rate cuts aren’t just a possibility, they’re the main course,” he said.
Elsewhere, in Europe Germany's DAX edged down 0.1% at midday, while the CAC 40 in Paris climbed 2.4%. Britain's FTSE 100 lost 0.5%.
In Tokyo, the Nikkei 225 rose 1.8% to 47,672.67, while the Hang Seng in Hong Kong surged 1.8% to 25,910.60.
The Shanghai Composite index gained 1.2% to 3,912.21.
In South Korea, the Kospi jumped 2.7% to 3,657.28 as market heavyweight Samsung Electronics advanced 3.7%.
Taiwan's Taiex added 1.8%.
