Wall Street futures bounce back as Iran worries fade and CoreWeave tops forecasts
Dow Jones futures climbed 0.16% to near 52,400 on Wednesday, with S&P 500 futures up 0.60% and Nasdaq 100 futures up 1.45%, as cooling Iran tensions and strong AI results lifted investor mood.
President Donald Trump indicated that further strikes on Iran may not be needed, a position also backed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio during his remarks at the G7 gathering. Reports suggest congressional Democrats intend to use the looming government funding deadline as a bargaining chip to push the White House toward a negotiated settlement on the matter, reinforcing the impression that geopolitical tension was cooling off.
AI infrastructure company CoreWeave saw its stock surge almost 8% in after-hours trading after posting quarterly figures that exceeded projections and raising its forward guidance, which reignited investor appetite for artificial-intelligence-linked stocks. Optimism got an extra lift from news that Anthropic may list publicly as soon as next week, in a deal reportedly aiming to secure as much as $90 billion in funding at a diluted valuation close to $1.4 trillion.
This recovery came after a soft trading day on Tuesday, when the Dow Jones slid 0.35%, the S&P 500 declined 0.38% and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 0.74%. That pullback followed October’s core consumer price index, which climbed 0.3% from the prior month — a hotter-than-anticipated figure that strengthened wagers on a December interest-rate hike from the Federal Reserve. According to the CME FedWatch tool, markets were pricing an 85% probability of such a move. Societe Generale economist Jan Groen remarked that the inflation figures signaled persistent underlying price pressure within the US economy, adding that the upcoming PCE price index would offer a clearer read on the inflation trajectory.
For markets, a firmer core inflation reading keeps the Fed under pressure to tighten policy further — a dynamic that tends to strengthen the dollar while pressuring equities and bonds whenever it resurfaces, even as fading geopolitical risk and robust AI earnings provide short-term relief to Dow Jones futures and broader stock gauges.
Source: FXStreet