By Peter Nurse
Investing.com -- U.S. stocks are seen opening higher Wednesday, bouncing after the previous session’s rout as investors digest the hot inflation report ahead of next week’s Federal Reserve policy meeting.
At 07:00 ET (11:00 GMT), the Dow Futures contract was up 85 points, or 0.3%, S&P 500 Futures traded 14 points, or 0.4%, higher and Nasdaq 100 Futures climbed 50 points, or 0.4%.
The major equity averages closed sharply lower Tuesday, suffering their biggest one-day losses in two years, with the blue chip Dow Jones Industrial Average dropping over 1,000 points, or 3.9%, the broad-based S&P 500 closing down 4.3% and the tech-heavy NASDAQ Composite slumping 5.2%.
Investors had hoped that the August CPI reading would prove convincingly that inflation had peaked, but inflation turned out stronger than expected, paving the way for another big hike in interest rates from the Federal Reserve next week.
According to exchange operator CME Group’s FedWatch tool, the market is now pricing in a 35% chance that the central bank will raise rates by a full percentage point, a larger increase than the hikes of 75 basis points that the Fed has authorized in its last two meetings.
The economic data slate includes the release of monthly producer prices, at 08:30 ET (12:30 GMT), providing another view on inflation.
The producer price index for August is expected to come in at 8.8% year-on-year, which would be down from 9.8% the prior month. For the month, the expectation is for a drop of 0.1%.
In the corporate sector, Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) will be in the spotlight after Europe's second-top court upheld an EU antitrust decision against the tech giant’s Google, but trimmed the record fine to 4.125 billion euros ($4.12 billion) from 4.34 billion euros.
Oil prices edged higher Wednesday, stabilizing after the release of the monthly report from the International Energy Agency.
The Paris-based organization lowered its forecast for global oil demand in 2022, citing the impact of COVID-19 restrictions in China and slowing growth in the developed world, but also forecast relatively robust growth next year despite economic headwinds.
U.S. crude stocks rose by just over 6 million barrels last week, according to data released Tuesday from the American Petroleum Institute, and official data from the Energy Information Administration is due later in the session.
By 07:00 ET (11:00 GMT), U.S. crude futures traded 0.7% higher at $87.95 a barrel, while the Brent contract rose 0.7% to $93.84.
Additionally, gold futures fell 0.2% to $1,713.70/oz, while EUR/USD traded 0.3% higher at 1.0001.