Wall St poised for higher open as rate-cut bets strengthen

By Shubham Batra and Amruta Khandekar

(Reuters) -Wall Street’s main indexes were set to kick off the last week of the year on a positive note on Tuesday as growing bets of early rate cuts by the Federal Reserve lifted investor sentiment after Christmas holidays.

U.S. stocks closed higher on Friday after data showed inflation was close to the Fed’s target. The three main indexes also logged their eighth consecutive weekly gains, the longest winning streak for the since late 2017.

The S&P 500 is now within 1% of its record close reached in January 2022. A close above that level will confirm the benchmark index has been on a bull run since bottoming out in October 2022.

Trading volumes are, however, likely to remain low during this week with most market participants away on year-end holidays.

Besides, the only key economic data expected this week is the jobless claims report on Thursday and no Fed officials are scheduled to speak.

“It’s going to be a fairly quiet trading session. The momentum stays towards the upside, but I don’t think we’re going to see any strong volume that would suggest we could be in for a strong rally,” said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Spartan Capital Securities in New York.

“We had a good inflation number on Friday. If inflation continues to move down in January and February, there’s a good chance that the Fed may cut (rates) earlier than anticipated.”

The Commerce Department’s Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) report on Friday showed inflation continues to meander down toward the Fed’s average annual 2% target.

Traders’ bets that the central bank will deliver a rate cut of at least 25 basis points in March 2024 stand at 88%, compared with about 21% at the end of November, according to the CME Group’s (NASDAQ:) FedWatch tool.

At 8:12 a.m. ET, were up 17 points, or 0.05%, were up 4.5 points, or 0.09%, and were up 29.5 points, or 0.17%.Shares of Manchester United (NYSE:) rose 3.2% in premarket trading after billionaire Jim Ratcliffe struck a long-awaited deal to buy a 25% stake in the football club at $33 per share.

Among other movers, Gracell Biotechnologies shot up 60.1% after AstraZeneca (NASDAQ:) said on Tuesday it will buy the China-based firm for up to $1.2 billion as the Anglo-Swedish pharma company furthers its cell therapy ambitions.

Intel Corp (NASDAQ:) rose 2.5% after Israel’s government agreed to give it a $3.2 billion grant for a new $25 billion chip plant it plans to build in southern Israel, both sides said on Tuesday.