Dec 17 (Reuters) - Wall Street's main indexes were poised to open slightly higher on Wednesday as investors searched for clues on the outlook for interest rates, while caution lingered following reports of funding hurdles for Oracle's data center plans.
Oracle (ORCL.N), fell 2% in premarket trading after a report said the cloud company's largest data center partner Blue Owl Capital (OWL.N), said it will not back a $10 billion deal for its next facility. Shares of the alternative asset manager also slipped 3%.
Worries about the broader technology sector turning to debt in trying to achieve their artificial intelligence goals have plagued risk-taking multiple times this quarter. AI bellwether Nvidia (NVDA.O), lost 0.4% on Wednesday.
Offering some relief for investors was Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller, often viewed as a dove on monetary policy. He said that the central bank still had room to cut interest rates against a softening jobs market.
U.S. equities had a volatile session on Tuesday, with the benchmark S&P 500 <.SPX> touching a three-week low after a key jobs report failed to offer enough clarity on the health of the labor market and analysts pointed to the likelihood of data distortion due to the recent government shutdown.
Mike O'Rourke, chief market strategist at JonesTrading, said "in this environment, the Fed is not in position to ease unless the economy deteriorates. Economic deterioration from nearly stalled levels in the job market would be decidedly negative."
Traders held on to expectations for two 25-basis-point rate cuts next year, according to data compiled by LSEG, with the first one expected in June - a month after a new Fed Chair is likely to be appointed.
The next significant report will be Thursday's consumer inflation data by the Commerce Department.
At 8:43 a.m. ET, Dow E-minis were up 96 points, or 0.20%, S&P 500 E-minis were up 12.75 points, or 0.19%, Nasdaq 100 E-minis were up 48.5 points, or 0.19%.
In the latest on who could take control of Warner Bros Discovery (WBD.O), , the media company's board rejected Paramount Skydance's (PSKY.O), $108.4 billion hostile bid, favoring Netflix's (NFLX.O), binding offer.
Netflix's shares rose 1.6%, while Paramount and Warner Bros were down 1% and 2.2%, respectively.
Oil stocks including Halliburton (HAL.N), and SLB (SLB.N), rose 1% each, tracking a 2% climb in crude prices as Trump ordered a "blockade" of all sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela.
Gold miner Newmont (NEM.N), and U.S.-listed shares of Barrick Mining climbed more than 1% each as gold prices rose, while silver miners jumped after the white metal topped $65 for the first time.
With two weeks left for in the year, Wall Street is set to log its third straight set of annual gains, buoyed by rate cut expectations and enthusiasm over artificial intelligence.
However, concerns over tech valuations have sparked a rotation into small caps (.RUT), and other areas of the market including healthcare (.SPXHC), and banks (.SPXBK), .
Amazon.com (AMZN.O), gained 1% after reports that the company was in talks to invest about $10 billion in ChatGPT maker OpenAI.
Pillsbury dough maker General Mills (GIS.N), and electronics company Jabil(JBL.N), gained about 1.3% and 7.3%, respectively, after reporting results.
Reporting by Johann M Cherian and Shashwat Chauhan in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel
