Tech stocks set to push Wall Street higher at open By Reuters

By Bansari Mayur Kamdar and Devik Jain

(Reuters) – Wall Street was expected to open higher on Thursday, helped by gains from tech-focused megacap companies a day after hawkish comments from the Federal Reserve weighed on markets.

Netflix Inc (NASDAQ:) jumped 4% in premarket trading as billionaire investor William Ackman amassed a new stake in the streaming services company worth more than $1 billion.

Tech-heavy Nasdaq futures rose 0.4%.

Apple (NASDAQ:), Microsoft (NASDAQ:), Meta Platforms and Alphabet (NASDAQ ? each gained nearly 1% as the iPhone maker was due to report results after markets closed.

Two-year U.S. yields, which are sensitive to interest rate expectations, rose to their highest levels since February 2020 after the Fed announced a March rate hike on Wednesday and reaffirmed its intention to end its bond purchases that month before initiating a significant reduction in its asset holdings. [US/]

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell warned that inflation remained above its long-term target and that supply problems were bigger and longer lasting than previously thought.

Traders forecast nearly five rate hikes by December after the Fed's announcement, after forecasting four earlier.

"The market has priced in the rate hikes, (but) it hasn't fully priced in the quantitative tightening, because we don't know what it's going to be and we don't know the impact," said Thomas Hayes, member director. at Great Hill Capital LLC in New York.

Geopolitical tensions in Ukraine heightened investor concerns. The United States said on Wednesday it had charted a diplomatic path to meet Russian demands in Eastern Europe, as Moscow held security talks with the West and stepped up its military buildup near Ukraine with new exercises.

The dive in the previous session reversed all of its early gains amid volatile trading, flirting with a correction for its third consecutive session.

The flagship index is expected to close 10% or more below its closing high reached on January 3, to confirm that it has entered correction territory. It ended the session 9.3% below that level on Wednesday.

The latest data showed the US economy grew 6.9% in the fourth quarter, well above economists' expectations of 5.5% growth.

Meanwhile, the fourth-quarter earnings season is in full swing, with analysts expecting earnings for S&P 500 companies to rise 24.4% year-over-year, according to Refinitiv, from of Wednesday.

Tesla (NASDAQ ? Inc fell 0.4% after warning supply chain issues will last through 2022, while chipmaker Intel Corp. (NASDAQ:) fell 2.9% on a pessimistic first-quarter earnings forecast due to global supply chain issues.

As of 8:38 a.m. ET, were up 43 points, or 0.13%, were up 14.25 points, or 0.33%, and were up 62.5 points, or 0.44%.

Digital workflow company ServiceNow (NYSE ? Inc) gained 10.7% after reporting upbeat fourth-quarter revenue and earnings, helped by strong subscription growth.