From Nasdaq:

Wall Street’s main indexes were set to open muted on Thursday after a hotter-than-expected inflation report dampened hopes of early interest-rate cuts, while regulatory approval for exchange-traded funds tracking spot bitcoin lifted crypto stocks. A U.S. Labor Department report showed the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose by 3.4% in December on an annual basis, higher than the 3.2% climb expected by economists polled by Reuters. Prices excluding volatile items like food and energy rose 3.9% in December year-on-year, compared with expectations of a 3.8% advance.

The hotter-than-expected inflation number means investors must rethink how many rate cuts the Fed will be able to pull off in 2024. The futures contracts that settle to the Fed’s target for the overnight lending rate between banks fell after the data. Market participants now imply about a 60% chance of a March rate cut, versus the 70% chance seen before the data. The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits stood at 202,000 in the week ending Jan. 6, compared with expectations of 210,000.

The yield on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury notes ticked up to over 4%, pressuring megacap stocks in premarket trading. Amazon.com AMZN.O, Microsoft MSFT.O and Nvidia NVDA.O pared gains and were up between 0.5% and 0.8%. The benchmark S&P 500 .SPX has recovered nearly 17% from its October lows, gathering steam in December after the Federal Reserve hinted it was reining in inflation and rate cuts were “coming into view”.

Investors will also parse remarks by Richmond Fed President Thomas Barkin, a voting member this year, later in the day. Crypto stocks like Coinbase COIN.O Bitfarms BITF.O and Riot Platforms RIOT.O advanced between 3.8% and 7.3% after the U.S. securities regulator approved the first U.S.-listed exchange-traded funds (ETF) to track bitcoin BTC=. At 8:47 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis 1YMcv1 were down 41 points, or 0.11%, S&P 500 e-minis EScv1 were down 4.5 points, or 0.09%, and Nasdaq 100 e-minis NQcv1 were up 1.5 points, or 0.01%.

CitigroupC.N declined 1.1% after a filing showed the lender booked about $3.8 billion in combined charges and reserves that will erode its fourth-quarter earnings, to be reported on Friday. Other banks like JPMorgan Chase JPM.N, Bank of America BAC.N and Wells Fargo WFC.N are also set to report on Friday. Lyft LYFT.O lost 1.5% after Goldman Sachs downgraded the ride-hailing platform’s stock to “neutral” from “buy”. NetflixNFLX.Orose 2.0% on a report that its ad-supported tier has reached more than 23 million active users per month globally.



Read more: US STOCKS-Wall St eyes flat open as inflation data dampens rate-cut hopes