Stock futures were higher on Wednesday as investors looked to a bank crisis at the end of the first quarter, crypto winter showing signs of thaw, and a temporary reversal of last year’s stock market performance.
As of 8:40 a.m. ET, S&P 500 futures were up 0.8%, Dow futures up 0.7% and Nasdaq futures up 0.8%.
With the first quarter set to wrap up on Friday, the Nasdaq is sitting on gains of close to 12%, with the S&P 500 up more than 3% so far this year, while the Dow is lagging, falling 2.2% in 2023.
This relative performance is a reversal from last year when the Nasdaq fell nearly 30%, the S&P 500 fell more than 18%, while the Dow fell a more modest 9%.
Crude oil was also higher early on Wednesday, trading up 1.2% near $74 a barrel.
Bitcoin (BTC-USD) was also notably higher, rising more than 5% to trade north of $28,000. Bitcoin has climbed more than 70% so far this year.
Wednesday’s move comes amid a somewhat slow calendar for corporate and economic news, with last night’s earnings from Micron Technology (MU) and Lululemon (LULU) serving as major highlights at the start of the trading session.
Micron shares were up more than 2.5% in early Wednesday trading after the chip giant suggested last night CEO Sanjay Mehrotra told investors that “we are close to transitioning to sequential revenue growth in our quarterly results.” “
Micron on Tuesday reported revenue for its fiscal second quarter that was down nearly 10% from the prior quarter and down 50% from the same period last year.
Mehrotra also pointed out the potential positive effects that investor enthusiasm around recent AI advances could have on the industry, telling investors: “Recent developments in artificial intelligence (AI) models, or provide an exciting prelude to the transformative capabilities of LLMs, such as ChatGPT, which require significant amounts of memory and storage to operate. We look forward to the widespread deployment of these AI technologies and their commercial use. are in the very early stages of a potentially exponential increase in cases.”
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Meanwhile, shares of Lululemon rose as much as 16% on Wednesday after reporting top- and bottom-line results that beat estimates, coupled with a 30% jump in fourth-quarter revenue and comparable store sales. increased by 27%.
A Lululemon sign is seen at a shopping mall in San Diego, California, US, November, 23, 2022. REUTERS/Mike Blake
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Source: finance.yahoo.com
