The Nasdaq led US stock futures higher on Thursday as investors weighed AI chipmaker Nvidia’s earnings report and took stock of President Trump’s latest tariff pledges.
Contracts on the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 (NQ=F) moved up roughly 0.8%, while those on the S&P 500 (ES=F) added 0.6% after both indexes eked out closing gains on Wednesday. Dow Jones Industrial Average futures (YM=F) edged 0.2% higher.
An upbeat tone is seeping into markets as investors dig into Nvidia’s quarterly earnings beat, which signaled plenty of scope for growth as it eased worries about DeepSeek and faltering AI demand. The results initially met a muted response as its profit outlook raised doubts on Wall Street, but Nvidia’s stock was up 2.6% premarket to recover from an earlier pullback.
Meanwhile, investors were scrutinizing President Trump’s latest escalation of tariff threats, as trade-war uncertainty dogs markets already worried about cracks in the US economy. The president pledged to impose 25% tariffs on the European Union and revived the paused duties on Canada and Mexico on Wednesday. But he remained vague on details, sparking confusion around timing.
Bitcoin (BTC-USD) prices — seen by some as a gauge of faith in Trump — continued to pull back from a post-election peak, falling 2%. But the cryptocurrency pared earlier overnight losses that saw it drop below $85,000 to hit its lowest point since November.
A fresh look at fourth quarter GDP and the Labor Department’s weekly update on jobless claims are on the docket on Thursday, providing clues to the US economy’s health as concerns grow. That will set the stage for Friday’s release of the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge, the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) index, as the path to interest rate cuts is seen as increasingly uncertain.
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