Stock futures rise as Fed meeting begins, JOLTS data due; Trump approves Nvidia H200 chipset sales to China

Stock futures rose slightly on Tuesday after President Donald Trump approved limited sales of Nvidia’s H200 AI chips to China and the Federal Reserve’s two-day meeting on interest rates is set to begin.

Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500 and tech-heavy Nasdaq rose 0.1%, 0.1% and slightly higher, respectively.

All three major indexes ended lower yesterday after ending last week within striking distance of all-time highs.

Investors expect officials to cut interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point tomorrow, with CME Group’s FedWatch tool indicating that financial markets are pricing in a roughly 90% probability that the central bank will cut its key interest rate to a range of 3.5% to 3.75%.

Traders will also focus on Tuesday’s late release of the October Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), which is scheduled for release at 10 a.m. ET.

The 10-year Treasury yield, which affects interest rates on a variety of business and consumer loans, fell to less than 4.16% from about 4.17% at Monday’s close.

Bitcoin was trading at around $90,300 at 4pm, down from overnight highs near $91,400. There was little change in the US dollar index, which measures the value of the US currency against a basket of foreign currencies, at 99.05.

Gold futures rose 0.4% to $4,235 an ounce, while West Texas Intermediate crude futures, the US crude oil benchmark, rose 0.3% to $59.05 a barrel.

Shares of Nvidia (NVDA), the world’s most valuable company by market cap at about $4.5 trillion, rose before the bell after President Trump said the United States would allow the company to ship H200 chips to “authorized customers” in China and other countries.

Alphabet (GOOGL) stock fell after the European Commission opened an investigation into whether its Google unit violated EU competition rules by using web publishers’ content for artificial intelligence purposes. Home Depot (HD) shares fell 1.5% after giving a preliminary forecast for fiscal year 2026 that was lower than analysts expected.

Shares of Paramount Skydance (PSKY) and Warner Bros. (PSKY) rose. Discovery (WBD), which closed up 9% and 4.5% respectively on Monday after Paramount launched a hostile takeover of WBD, rose another 3% and 1% in pre-market trading. WBD, the popular movie studio and operator of streaming service HBO Max, on Friday agreed to acquire Netflix (NFLX) for $83 billion, but President Trump said Sunday that the Netflix deal “could be a problem.” Netflix shares rose after falling 3.5% yesterday.