Futures little changed on caution ahead of Nvidia results, economic data

By Johann M Cherian and Purvi Agarwal

(Reuters) -U.S. stock index futures were muted on Tuesday ahead of highly anticipated results from Nvidia (NASDAQ:) and crucial economic data expected later in the week.

The benchmark and the Nasdaq took a pause from last week’s rally on Monday as investors sold tech-related stocks and shifted their focus to the upcoming earnings report from AI chip firm Nvidia.

Nvidia’s shares, which led a recent bull-market rally, were marginally up in premarket trading ahead of the company’s results on Wednesday, where it is likely to report quarterly revenue that more than doubled and even a slight miss could hurt shares.

Some investors are concerned about the chip designer’s ability to meet lofty expectations and have questioned the pace of spending on artificial intelligence by Nvidia’s largest customers.

“Nvidia’s earnings on Wednesday is by far the most important event in global equities,” said Peter Garnry, chief investment strategist at investment platform Saxo.

“Given the underlying momentum in the AI industry and the results we have seen from other companies in the AI ecosystem, we lean in direction of Nvidia beating consensus and lifting guidance for fiscal Q3 surpassing estimates.”

Other chip stocks such as Broadcom (NASDAQ:) fell 0.2%, while Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:) added 0.2%, after the notched a decline of more than 2.5% on Monday.

At 7:24 a.m. ET, were down 31 points, or 0.07%, were down 3.25 points, or 0.06%, and were down 3 points, or 0.02%.

The blue-chip Dow closed at a record high for the first time in more than a month in the previous session and the benchmark S&P 500 is about 0.8% from its own milestone.

Traders are now betting on either a 25-basis point or a 50-basis point rate cut in September. Odds of the former stand at a higher 71.5%, while those of a 50-bps cut are at 28.5%, according to CME Group’s (NASDAQ:) Fed Watch tool.

A lot of the sluggish momentum in equities is likely to do with a bit of indecision about what’s going to happen at the Fed’s September meeting, Daniela Hathorn, senior market analyst at Capital.com, said.

U.S. consumer confidence numbers for August are due at 10 a.m. ET, but analysts say the next major catalyst will most likely be the July Personal Consumption Expenditure data due on Friday.

Meanwhile, UBS Global Wealth Management raised the odds of a U.S. recession to 25% from 20%, citing revised estimates of job growth and the recent July labor report that showed softness in the factors determining workers’ income.

Paramount Global slid 5.5% after media veteran Edgar Bronfman Jr withdrew from the race for the company, clearing the way for Skydance Media to take control of Shari Redstone’s media empire.

Chinese e-commerce giant JD (NASDAQ:).com’s U.S.-listed shares gained 3.6% after its board approved a new $5 billion share repurchase program.

Hershey fell 1.9% after brokerage Citigroup downgraded the chocolate maker’s shares to “sell” from “neutral”.