Sept 16 (Reuters) - Futures tied to the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq nudged higher on Tuesday after both the indexes closed at record highs in the previous session, as investors remained expectant about interest rate cuts from the Federal Reserve later this week.
Investors largely priced in a 25 basis point cut from the U.S. central bank at the conclusion of its two-day meeting on Wednesday, in an attempt to offset the deterioration in the U.S. labor market, evidenced by numerous recent economic indicators.
Rate cut expectations remained unchanged after the U.S. Senate confirmed economic adviser Stephen Miran to the Fed Board and an appeals court rejected President Donald Trump's bid to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook.
Market participants are still pricing in a total of about 68 basis points in monetary policy easing by end-2025, data compiled by LSEG showed.
An August reading of retail sales is among the last datasets ahead of the Fed's decision, due at 8:30 a.m. ET, that could provide some more insights on U.S. consumer health.
"Risks now seem to be much more on the employment side of the (Fed's) mandate and the Fed easing monetary conditions further will ... prevent a worse deterioration in the labor market," said Luigi Speranza, global head of markets 360 at BNP Paribas.
"We've seen still limited evidence of pass-through from tariffs."
In stocks, Oracle (ORCL.N), gained 4.7% in premarket trading. CBS News reported on Monday that the cloud computing giant is among a consortium of firms that would enable TikTok to continue operations in the U.S. if a Sino-U.S. framework deal was reached.
At 7:08 a.m. ET, Dow E-minis were down 18 points, or 0.04%, S&P 500 E-minis were up 11 points, or 0.17%, and Nasdaq 100 E-minis were up 67 points, or 0.28%.
The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq closed at record highs on Monday, helped by robust gains in Tesla (TSLA.O), and Alphabet (GOOGL.O), with the latter zooming past $3 trillion in market valuation for the first time.
Wall Street's main indexes have gained so far in September, a month that is deemed bad for U.S. equities historically. Data compiled by LSEG showed that the benchmark S&P 500 has lost 1.5% on average in September since 2000.
Among other stocks, Dave & Buster's Entertainment (PLAY.O), plunged 15.7% before the bell after the entertainment and dining venues operator missed analysts' expectations for second-quarter revenue and profit.
Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG.N), gained 1.6% after raising its share buyback authorization.
Webtoon Entertainment (WBTN.O), soared 39.4% after the online comics platform and Disney (DIS.N), agreed to create a new digital comics platform to feature comic content from Disney's portfolio, including Marvel and Star Wars.
Warner Bros Discovery (WBD.O), fell 1.8%. TD Cowen downgraded the media company's rating to "hold" from "buy".
Reporting by Purvi Agarwal and Sukriti Gupta in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel
