Stock market recovers some earlier losses while waiting on Nvidia earnings

Wall Street bounced back from this week’s earlier losses on Wednesday ahead of the latest earnings report from Nvidia, considered a bellwether for the artificial intelligence sector.

S&P 500 futures gained 0.3 per cent before the bell, Dow Jones Industrial futures ticked up 0.1 per cent and Nasdaq futures rose 0.4 per cent.

Nvidia reports its earnings for the last quarter after the closing bell. The most influential stock on Wall Street, Nvidia steers the direction of the S&P 500 some days. Fervent demand for its AI chips has helped it briefly top $5 trillion US in total value.

Shares of the California company are up about two per cent before the market opens.

Meanwhile, Target slid 1.9 per cent after its third-quarter profit tumbled and the retailer said that it expects its sales slump to extend through the critical holiday shopping season.

The Minneapolis company has struggled to lure inflation-weary shoppers and investors have punished it, sending its shares down 43 per cent over the past year.

Lowe’s jumped more than five per cent after the home improvement chain beat Wall Street profit targets and raised some of its full-year guidance.

Constellation Energy jumped 3.4 per cent after the U.S. Department of Energy said that it will loan $1 billion US to help finance the restart of Constellation’s nuclear power plant on Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island that is under contract to supply power to data centers for tech giant Microsoft.

Elsewhere, in Europe at midday, France’s CAC 40 ticked up 0.1 per cent, Germany’s DAX rose 0.4 per cent and the FTSE 100 in Britain was unchanged.

In Asia, Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 slipped 0.3 per cent to finish at 48,537.70. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng dropped 0.4 per cent to 25,830.65, while the Shanghai Composite rose 0.2 per cent to 3,946.74.

Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 shed 0.3 per cent to 8,447.90, while South Korea’s Kospi lost 0.6 per cent to 3,929.51. Taiwan’s Taiex lost 0.7 per cent.

In energy trading, benchmark U.S. crude lost $1.17, or 1.9 per cent, to $59.50 a barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, fell $1.16 to $63.73 per barrel.