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US stock futures climbed on Wednesday as Wall Street awaited Nvidia (NVDA) earnings, looking for a strong signal on AI demand to provide some relief from ongoing inflation concerns.

S&P 500 futures (ES=F) moved up 0.3%, while those on the Nasdaq 100 (NQ=F) jumped 0.5%. Contracts on the Dow Jones Industrial Average (YM=F) , which includes fewer tech stocks, edged up 0.2%. On Tuesday, stocks declined as techs pulled back and Treasury yields surged.

Investors are counting down to the release of quarterly results from Nvidia. While shares in the world's most valuable company have continued to rise this year, chipmaker rivals are closing in. Markets are pricing in a move of about 5.5% for Nvidia shares in either direction following the results, per Bloomberg.

Investors are looking to the results to gauge whether AI demand will continue to boom, as the chipmaker is a linchpin of the industry and could offer clues about whether Big Tech is still spending massively on AI build-outs.

Concerns that sticky inflation will force the Federal Reserve to hike interest rates have dampened interest in growth stocks, including AI, as US bond yields surged to levels not seen in almost two decades. Minutes of the Fed’s April meeting, set for release on Wednesday, will reveal the depth of the differences among policymakers on the path of rates.

The Iran war — a major driver of rising prices — continues with no end in sight. President Trump threatened to attack the Middle Eastern country in the coming days if a peace deal isn’t reached soon and again asserted the war with Iran will end "very quickly".

Elsewhere on the earnings front, Target’s (TGT) blowout first quarter results highlighted a flurry of reports from retailers on Wednesday as energy price hikes strain wallets.

Yahoo Finance’s Ines Ferré reports:

Intel (INTC), Micron (MU), and Sandisk (SNDK) stocks bounced back for a second day in a row on Wednesday. AMD (AMD), Marvell (MRVL), and Arm Holdings (ARM) also gained in premarket.

Semiconductor stocks rose in anticipation of Nvidia’s (NVDA) quarterly results as shares of the artificial intelligence chip heavyweight rebounded by more than 1%.

The semiconductor complex came back from a broader sell-off driven by rising bond yields and growing inflation fears. Memory and storage stocks like Micron and Sandisk also recovered from recent profit-taking by investors following an epic run.

Read more here.

Yahoo Finance’s Brian Sozzi reports:

Somehow, Target (TGT) defied US consumer trends in the first quarter.

Gas price spikes across the country have hammered shoppers’ wallets and driven inflation higher. Consumer sentiment has plunged, while interest rate cut expectations have dropped.

One would have thought Target — with its well-documented operating struggles in 2025 — would have reported a horrid first quarter.

Instead, it reported a $0.28 earnings beat on Wednesday. Sales increased in all merchandise departments, led by beauty, hardlines, and food. Store traffic increased.

The company even jacked up its full-year sales outlook and said it expects sales to increase in each quarter of the year.

“No doubt there's a lot to pay attention to there [with consumers], because the consumer's got headwinds and some tailwinds, and so we're paying a ton of attention to how consumers are finding value on our site and on our shelves, and some of the changes that we've made are with that in mind. Now, for us, it will always be about being sharp on price,” Target CEO Michael Fiddelke told Yahoo Finance.

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The selloff in longer-maturity government bonds has pushed up yields to levels last seen during the global financial crisis, and market participants are warning the move has room to run.

From Bloomberg:

A surge in global inflation expectations has brought the average yield on sovereign debt due in a decade or more to the highest since July 2008, a Bloomberg gauge shows. It comes as the war in Iran chokes off the vital Strait of Hormuz waterway, sending Brent crude above $110 a barrel.

Global long-dated bonds have been under pressure on concern the jump in energy costs will feed into everything from plastic bottles for soda to gasoline for tractors needed to harvest crops.

Add in worries over government spending in Japan, the UK and the US, as well as an artificial intelligence boom supporting growth in the world’s biggest economy, and investors have been seeking greater compensation to own longer-maturity debt.

“We’re seeing a broader repricing of duration driven by fiscal realities, persistent inflation risks and some political uncertainty, as well as a more demanding investor base,” said Patrick Coffey, head of a research group at Barclays Plc in London. “It’s hard to point to a near-term catalyst outside of the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz that could fully reverse the current selloff.”

Read more here.