Sept 25 (Reuters) – US stock index futures rose on Friday as AI optimism offset weak sentiment due to worrying levels of oil prices and rising Treasury yields.
Chip stocks Advanced Micro Devices, Marvell, Cerebras and Intel rose 2% each to lead gains in premarket trading. Megacaps Tesla, Nvidia and SpaceX were also marginally higher.
Akamai Technologies shares surged 21% after the IT services company signed a $11.6 billion cloud services deal with AI lab Anthropic.
Optimism this week among AI sectors was driven by the increased traction among young consumers for Meta’s AI application Muse and a device integrated with the AI agent, Charm.
Shares of the social media giant were set for its fifth-straight week of gains. It would be the stock’s biggest five-week gain since late January 2023, putting it less than 1% away from the $2 trillion market value. Meta was trading flat premarket.
At 05:15 a.m. ET, Dow E-minis were up 162 points, or 0.31%, and S&P 500 E-minis were up 23.75 points, or 0.31%. Nasdaq 100 E-minis were up 188 points, or 0.61%.
The communication services, which includes Meta, and tech led weekly gains among S&P 500 sectors. The benchmark index and the tech-heavy Nasdaq were set for weekly gains.
However, gains were capped by Brent crude prices hovering at more than $100-a-barrel and the yield on the 10-year Treasury note at 5.1% amid growing inflation worries due to the prolonged Iran and Ukraine conflicts, as well as soaring government debt.
Offering some hope was a report that US and Iranian negotiators continued to explore a phased path out of war that would involve Tehran reopening the Strait of Hormuz and Washington lifting its economic blockade.
Traders see a 71% chance that the Federal Reserve will hike interest rates by at least 25 basis points in October, up from around 50% earlier this week, the CME Group’s FedWatch Tool showed.
Policymakers, including New York Fed President John Williams, Kansas City Fed President Jeffrey Schmid and Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack, are likely to echo their restrictive stance on monetary policy when they speak later in the day.
Data on durable goods for August is also due at 8:30 a.m. ET.
People rose 9.4% after a report said MGM Resorts International was discussing a bid for the online services company.
(Reporting by Johann M Cherian in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur)
