(Reuters) – U.S. stock index futures rose on Thursday, led by Tesla and other growth shares following a broad selloff on Wall Street on worries over surging inflation and the path for interest rate hikes.
The electric-vehicle maker’s shares jumped 3.5% in premarket trading as it sold 32,165 China-made vehicles last month, up sharply from 1,152 in April.
UBS also upgraded Tesla’s stock to “buy” and raised its profit estimates for the next three years.
Shares of other megacap companies, including Microsoft Corp and Apple Inc, gained 0.4% and 0.7%, respectively.
The S&P 500 closed down 1.1% on Wednesday, dragged lower by chipmakers after a bearish brokerage report by Citi Research on Intel Corp and elevated U.S. Treasury yields.
A spike in Brent crude prices above an eye-watering $123 a barrel has made investors anxious ahead of the U.S. consumer price index report on Friday.
Market participants fear a hot reading on inflation could keep the U.S. Federal Reserve on its path to raise interest rates aggressively against the backdrop of a volatile stock market, strong consumer spending and tight labor market.
On Wednesday, International Monetary Fund First Deputy Managing Director Gita Gopinath said U.S. inflation could remain above the Fed’s 2% target for a long time based on current projections, and overall, the risks are towards the possibility that this will require much more steeper increases in rates.
The U.S. central bank has raised its short-term interest rate by three-quarters of a percentage point this year and intends to keep at it with 50 basis points increases at its meeting next week and again in July.
At 6:58 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis were up 158 points, or 0.48%, S&P 500 e-minis were up 22.25 points, or 0.54%, and Nasdaq 100 e-minis were up 76.5 points, or 0.61%.
Alibaba fell 3.5% after China’s securities regulator said it had not conducted any assessment regarding a revival of Ant Group’s initial public offering (IPO).
Bloomberg News reported earlier that Chinese financial regulators have started early-stage discussions on a potential revival of Ant Group’s IPO.
A reading on weekly jobless claims data is due at 08:30 a.m. ET.
(Reporting by Devik Jain and Mehnaz Yasmin in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)
