(Reuters) – U.S. stock index futures inched up on Friday as signs of easing price pressures and slowing economic growth raised hopes the Federal Reserve could end its monetary tightening campaign soon.
The S&P 500 and Nasdaq rallied to fresh 14-month highs on Thursday as a slew of economic data pointed to cooling inflation and outweighed concerns about further interest rate hikes that the Fed forecast on Wednesday.
The U.S. central bank signaled borrowing costs could rise by as much as half a percentage point by the end of this year but traders are pricing in just one more 25-basis-point rate hike, expected in July, as per CMEGroup’s Fedwatch tool.
Microsoft edged 0.3% higher in premarket trading, a day after its shares closed at an all-time high and the software giant notched a record market value of $2.59 trillion.
Chipmaker Nvidia rose 1.4% after scaling new peaks on Thursday.
The main Wall Street indexes were on track for a strong weekly showing, with the advance in megacap stocks including Nvidia and Microsoft setting up the tech-heavy Nasdaq for its eighth consecutive week of gains.
The University of Michigan’s preliminary reading on consumer sentiment, due at 10:00 a.m. ET, is expected to show the index rose to 60 in June from 59.2 in May.
Meanwhile, a simultaneous expiration of stock options, stock index futures and index options contracts on Friday, known as triple witching, could cause a spike in market volatility.
At 6:10 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis were up 5 points, or 0.01%, S&P 500 e-minis were up 2.75 points, or 0.06%, and Nasdaq 100 e-minis were up 14.5 points, or 0.09%.
Adobe Inc rose 3.4% as the Photoshop maker’s earnings forecast surpassed analyst estimates as efforts to drive up demand with generative artificial intelligence (AI) integrations pay off.
Maker of Roomba vacuum cleaners iRobot Corp jumped 21.8% after Britain’s competition regulator cleared Amazon.com Inc’s planned $1.7 billion acquisition of the company.
(Reporting by Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru; Editing by Vinay Dwivedi)
