Pre-Bell｜Wall St Futures Slip Ahead of Fed Meeting; Nvidia Edges Up; EchoStar Jumps 5%; GEV Soars 11%; Photronics Rockets 16%; GameStop Drops 6%

U.S. stock index futures fell on Wednesday, ahead of a Federal Reserve monetary policy decision widely expected to deliver an interest rate cut alongside hawkish commentary on the path of future easing.

Market Snapshot

At 7:50 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis were down 38 points, or 0.08%, S&P 500 E-minis were down 6.75 points, or 0.10%, and Nasdaq 100 E-minis were down 55 points, or 0.21%.

Pre-Market Movers

Nvidia jumped 0.17% in the premarket session. ByteDance and Alibaba have asked Nvidia about buying its powerful H200 AI chip after U.S. President Donald Trump said he would allow it to be exported to China, Reuters reported.

GEV rose 11% after it raised its outlook and boosted its dividend and share buyback authorization. The energy company now sees revenue hitting $52 billion on a low double-digits compound annual growth rate by 2028, up from a previous forecast of $45 billion.

Semiconductor component maker Photronics' shares rise 16% to $29.91 premarket. Co's Q4 EPS comes in at $1.07 per share versus $0.54 a year ago. PLAB reports Q4 rev of $215.8 mln, above analysts' avg. estimate of $205.22 mln.

Palantir Technologies gained 1.25% after the software company won a contract with the U.S. Navy to manage the supply chain of a nuclear submarine fleet in the hope of reducing maintenance downtime. The deal, valued at $448 million, is being paid for with money from President Donald Trump’s signature spending bill.

EchoStar was up 4.8%, continuing an upward move following a report that Elon Musk’s space technology company SpaceX might be headed for a 2026 initial public offering. Satellite communications company EchoStar announced a deal to sell its AWS-4 and H-block spectrum licenses to SpaceX earlier this year.

GameStop declined 6.1% after its third-quarter earnings report showed revenue slipped from the same time last year. The videogame retailer reported revenue in the latest period of $821 million and earnings of 24 cents a share. In the year-earlier quarter, GameStop reported revenue of $860 million and earnings of 6 cents a share.

Braze, the customer engagement platform, jumped 15% after topping analysts’ revenue estimates in the third quarter and boosting fiscal 2026 guidance.

AeroVironment fell 4.4% after the drone maker posted fiscal second-quarter adjusted earnings that missed Wall Street estimates and cut its earnings forecast for the fiscal year.

Oracle rose 0.3% in premarket trading ahead of fiscal second-quarter earnings from the database software company, a big beneficiary of the artificial-intelligence trade in 2025. Coming into the report, scheduled for after the close of trading Wednesday, Oracle has risen 33% this year. Analysts expect Oracle to post roughly 15% in sales growth, driven by rapid growth for the company’s cloud and AI software products.

Market News

Fed Expected to Cut Rates, but May Signal a Coming Pause

The U.S. Federal Reserve is expected to cut interest rates on Wednesday as policymakers grapple with gaps in economic data caused by the recent government shutdown and work through competing views about the risks facing the economy.

The anticipated quarter-percentage-point cut may well come with a non-committal or even hawkish approach to next year's rate path given the division among policymakers between those skeptical about the need for more rate reductions in the face of still-elevated inflation and those who feel the economy and job market may weaken if the U.S. central bank doesn't bring down borrowing costs.