With concerns over inflation shrouding a generally strong round of corporate earnings results, stock futures were mixed when opening on Wednesday morning. Contracts on the S&P 500 remain up by 1.8% for the year despite ending Wednesday’s session lower.
Inflation worries, along with a decline in new-home construction last month, have added to investors’ mounting concerns over potential elevated prices. A large array of companies share in these worries, with Target announcing a rise in labor and other input costs during an earnings call on Wednesday morning.
The strong possibility that the rise in inflation will persist for longer than expected is influencing the Federal Reserve to strongly consider raising interest rates at short notice.
Among those stocks that performed strongly on Wednesday was Nvidia. The semiconductor company posted record quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, thereby suggesting that Nvidia has done well to cope with the ongoing global microchip shortage while meeting an escalating level of demand.
Not all microchip producers reaped strong results, however, as Cisco was battered by component shortages as well as less-than-stellar financial projections for Q4.
Another one of Wednesday’s big winners was Victoria’s Secret, with the fashion retailer posting Q3 results that exceeded analysts’ expectations while also projecting that sales would climb by 3% by year’s end.
