Stock futures traded mostly lower Wednesday as the personal consumption expenditures index, or PCE, for July revealed inflation was a bit stronger than expected.
Nvidia earnings after the bell could be key in determining where the artificial-intelligence trade goes next. Investors appeared to be cautiously optimistic-shares of the the AI chip maker were down 0.3% in premarket trading after rising 2.2% in the previous session to snap a seven-day losing streak.
Intel was down 1.2% and Broadcom rose 0.2% as the market is in wait-and-see mode when it comes to chip stocks.
Meta Platforms advanced 4.7%. The company reached a settlement over a lawsuit alleging the company's social-media platforms harmed children.
Intuit fell 10% after the software company beat earnings expectations but provided a disappointing revenue outlook late Tuesday. It expects revenue growth between 9% and 10% this year, down from 14% last year. CEO Sasan Goodarzi told Barron's the company was focused on gaining market share in the competitive AI software environment.
ServiceNow, Adobe, and Atlassian all down more than 2%. Salesforce, which reports earnings after the close, declined 2.5% and Palantir was also down 1.1%.
Software stocks likely will remain in focus with Salesforce, Okta, CrowdStrike, and Nutanix set to report earnings after the close of trading.
Boston Scientific dropped 5.8%. The company in a regulatory filing said it had identified a cybersecurity incident affecting its information technology systems which resulted in a global disruption to operations.
Banking software maker nCino declined 4.7% after the company's revenue outlook disappointed investors following its earnings Tuesday.
Zoom Communications fell 6.3% even as the company posted a solid earnings report. The video-calling platform beat analysts' expectations but failed to give any update on the valuation of its stake in AI start-up Anthropic.
Crypto-exposed stocks were cooling off after a hot recent run as Bitcoin dropped to around $78,316 from highs of close to $81,000 earlier this week. Strategy and Coinbase Global were both down 1.7%. Robinhood Markets declined 1.6%.
Abercrombie & Fitch rose 12% after the clothing retailer's fiscal second-quarter earnings and profit outlook came in above expectations even as sale-store sales remained under pressure.
Kohl's fell 7%. The retailer reported better-than-expected quarterly profit, but net sales fell and comparable sales also declined. Kohl's also raised its fiscal-year outlook to reflect the impact of roughly $150 million in tariff refunds received in the second quarter.