US stocks set to open higher after soft producer prices
SPY•SPY•SPY•SPY•US stock index futures rose after October producer prices increased 0.3%, below economists’ 0.4% forecast. The softer-than-expected reading potentially eased pressure on the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates aggressively.
The Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 futures were up 0.48%, 0.50% and 0.27%, respectively, at 8:47 a.m. ET. October’s Producer Price Index for final demand rose 0.3%, against a 0.4% increase expected by economists.
Nvidia rose 2.3% in premarket trading after losing about 11% through Thursday, while Microsoft dipped less than 1% after an outage affecting Outlook and Teams that lasted more than 12 hours. Traders were fully pricing in a Federal Reserve rate hike next month; the probability of a 50-basis-point increase was around 14%. Of 450 S&P 500 companies that had reported earnings as of Thursday, 83.6% had exceeded expectations.
