Stocks looked set to pare back some of their losses on Wednesday, with investors trying to figure out whether to buy the dip after the major indexes slid away from record highs the previous session.
Futures tracking the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 34 points, or 0.1%. S&P 500 futures were also 0.1% higher, and contracts tied to the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 rose 0.2%.
Bonds and gold were the two bright spots on Tuesday, but they looked set to struggle to build on those gains. The yield on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury note was flat at 4.11% and gold futures slipped 0.2% to $3,809 an ounce.
Oil prices were rising after President Donald Trump said Ukraine could win back all the territory it has lost to Russia and threatened to impose stronger tariffs on Moscow. Brent international prices climbed 0.5% to $67.27 a barrel, and West Texas Intermediate U.S. crude was up 0.5% to $63.73 a barrel.
Two factors appear to have weighed on sentiment over the past 24 hours. Wall Street realized it may take a while for Nvidia’s $100 billion investment in OpenAI to boost the chip maker’s earnings, and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell signaled the central bank may not cut interest rates much more, despite concerns about the health of the job market.
There were “a couple of main drivers for this retreat,” Deutsche Bank analyst Jim Reid said. “One was a reversal in tech as there were as many questions as answers over Nvidia’s high-profile $100 billion tie-up with OpenAI from Monday. The other was a slightly more cautious tone on the labour market by Powell.”