Nasdaq futures rise 1.9% as traders price a December rate increase

Nasdaq-100 futures were up 1.9% from Tuesday's close shortly before 7 a.m. ET on Wednesday. S&P 500 futures were up 0.9%, and Dow futures were up 125 points, or 0.2%.

The rate news is pointing the other way. CNBC said traders put the chance of a quarter-point Federal Reserve rate increase in December at about 90%, citing CME Group's FedWatch tool. That is an increase, not a cut. The Treasury market that would reprice those odds is closed today for Veterans Day.

In CNBC's 6:29 a.m. ET update, Nvidia was up 5%. The stock fell 5.5% on Tuesday, to $168.89. CNBC said investors were weighing the fallout from Chief Executive Jensen Huang's affair with an alleged Chinese spy, after he told staff he had been unfaithful.

That drop accounted for the S&P 500's 0.4% decline. The Nasdaq Composite fell 0.7%, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.3%. It was a narrow, tech-led loss, and Nvidia is leading the bounce.

CoreWeave is not rebounding from Tuesday. It fell 0.5% then. The same CNBC update had the AI cloud company up 13% after quarterly revenue beat expectations and it raised its 2026 outlook.

October inflation came in hotter than forecast. The Bureau of Labor Statistics said consumer prices rose 0.4% in October, after 0.6% in September. Prices excluding food and energy rose 0.3%, the same pace as September, against a forecast of 0.2%, CNBC reported.

A Dow Jones survey of economists had expected overall prices to rise 0.3%, and the bureau published no 12-month rate because last year's government shutdown left it without an October 2025 comparison, CNBC reported. Both readings were 0.1 percentage point above that consensus, CNBC reported.

The two-year Treasury yield ended Tuesday at 4.73%, up 17 basis points. The 10-year ended at 4.98%, up 10 basis points. CNBC attributed the jump to the inflation report, to comments from Federal Reserve Governor Christopher J. Waller, and to a soft auction of 10-year notes.

Waller had said in London on Tuesday, before the report, that he would support a rate increase in December even if inflation improved.

"I would still support a 25 basis point increase in the FOMC's policy rate at our December meeting," he said, referring to the Federal Open Market Committee. If core inflation was still around 0.3% a month, he said a half-point increase should be considered. The core figure came in at 0.3%.

The New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq are open for a regular session, Kiplinger reported. The bond market is not.

If you own a bond ETF, you can still sell the shares on the exchange. The order goes to another investor, not back to the fund. State Street said it will not take the large orders it usually takes to create or retire shares of its fixed-income ETFs today, including the State Street SPDR Bloomberg 1-3 Month T-Bill ETF, BIL, and the State Street SPDR Portfolio Aggregate Bond ETF, SPAB. The bonds those funds hold are not trading.

No government data is due today. The next test of the rate move is Thursday, when the Treasury auctions $25 billion of 30-year bonds at 1 p.m. ET. October producer prices are due from the Bureau of Labor Statistics at 8:30 a.m. ET Friday.