Stock futures little changed after major indexes notch worst day in a month: Live updates

Stock futures are little changed Thursday night after Wall Street witnessed its worst day in more than a month.

Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 65 points, or 0.1%. S&P futures ticked up about 0.1%, while Nasdaq 100 futures added 0.08%.

Major U.S. indexes, along with the small-cap Russell 2000 index, posted big losses on Thursday to close out their worst one-day performance since Oct. 10. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost about 800 points, or 1.7%, taking back gains seen in Wednesday’s session when it crossed the 48,000 level.

Technology giants came away battered in the previous session, putting the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite on pace to snap its seven-week win streak. Nvidia and Broadcom notably declined 3.6% and 4.3%, respectively, while Google parent Alphabet fell 2.8%.

Concerns about the artificial intelligence trade have emerged more seriously this week, with the recent wipeout in once-hot cloud stock Oracle further spooking investors about elevated tech valuations, a massive surge in debt financing and soaring AI capex plans. To be sure, Oracle’s growth is uniquely more reliant on its cloud deal with OpenAI and the company has far less cash compared to hyperscalers.

“We saw what happened in 2021. Those stocks got destroyed, everything was okay for a while, and then it turned out that the rest of the market had more of a reset to do as well,” Yung-Yu Ma, PNC Asset Management chief investment strategist, said Thursday. “I do think a lot of the market is underpinned by the AI trade. I still think this pullback is a healthy pullback here. And you have this push and pull in the market, you have this reset of investor sentiment but you also have a lot of broken failed breakouts and broken charts. And that does take a while to rebuild.”

Mounting unease about the Federal Reserve’s upcoming interest rate decision also added pressure to the market on Thursday. Traders are now pricing in a nearly 52% chance that the central bank will cut its benchmark overnight borrowing rate by a quarter percentage point during their December meeting, which is lower than the 62.9% likelihood that markets priced in a day ago and 95.5% chance a month ago, per the CME FedWatch Tool.

The U.S. government shutdown, which was the longest in history, ended Wednesday evening after stretching on for more than six weeks. That development had been expected to end a period of time where investors were operating without important economic data. Instead, it has raised new questions. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt suggested that some economic data that was due out during the impasse might never be released. Now, some investors think it might make the Fed less inclined to cut rates.

Week to date, the S&P 500 is up about 0.1% and the 30-stock Dow is higher by 1%. Meanwhile, the Nasdaq is down nearly 0.6% this week.