Strong overnight gains have Wall Street poised to open at record highs Thursday following the Federal Reserve’s first interest rate cut in nine months.
Futures for the S&P 500 rose 0.8% before the bell, while futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.7%. Nasdaq futures jumped 1.1%.
Intel shares soared more than 28% after Nvidia announced it was investing $5 billion in the California chipmaker as part of a collaboration to ramp up custom data center and personal computer products. Nvidia shares rose 2.6%.
Cracker Barrel shares slid 8.2% after the restaurant chain said that it expects lower sales and weaker customer traffic in the coming year as the controversy over its planned logo change continues to play out.
In a conference call with investors on Wednesday, Cracker Barrel said traffic at its restaurants was down 1% in early August, before it announced it was adopting a more simplified logo that upset many of its loyal customers. The company eventually relented and went back to the old logo.
Walt Disney shares were largely unchanged after the entertainment giant announced that its ABC television division had suspended Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show indefinitely after comments that he made about Charlie Kirk’s killing led a group of ABC-affiliated stations to say they would not air the show.
Earlier in the day, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr called Kimmel’s comments “truly sick” and said his agency has a strong case for holding Kimmel, ABC and network parent Walt Disney Co. accountable for spreading misinformation.
As expected on Wednesday, the Federal Reserve cut its main interest rate, but even more important was the set of projections that U.S. central bank officials published showing where they expect interest