Stock futures inch up Tuesday as March inflation report looms ahead: Live updates – CNBC

European stock markets are expected to open higher across the board in a strong start to the trading week.

The U.K.’s FTSE 100 is set to be up 45.9 points to reach 7,795.2 and Germany’s DAX will increase 118 points to 15,718, according to IG data. France’s CAC index will be up 62.7 points to 7,381.8 and Italy’s MIB is set for a 205.5-point uptick to 26,894.6.

— Hannah Ward-Glenton

China’s inflation for March came in lower than expected at 0.7% against expectations of a 1% rise in its consumer price index compared to a year ago.

Producer price index also fell 2.5% year-on-year, in line with forecasts by Reuters and after seeing a decline of 1.4% in the previous month.

— Jihye Lee

Hong Kong-listed shares of Alibaba rose 3.12% in early Tuesday trading after the Chinese tech giant’s cloud computing subsidiary debuted its ChatGPT-style product Tongyi Qianwen.

Alibaba Cloud said in a statement that Tongyi Qianwen will be rolled out across all Alibaba products from e-commerce to search in the near future. Alibaba did not reveal a timeline.

“We are at a technological watershed moment driven by generative AI and cloud computing, and businesses across all sectors have started to embrace intelligence transformation to stay ahead of the game,” said Daniel Zhang, chairman and CEO of Alibaba Group and CEO of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, in a statement.

Alibaba is the latest Chinese player to unveil a ChatGPT clone after Baidu’s Ernie Bot in March. Baidu continued to see losses of more than 4%.

— Sheila Chiang

Cryptocurrencies rose on Asia’s Tuesday morning, with Bitcoin gaining by more than 7% in the past 24 hours to $30,190 according to Coin Metrics.

Bitcoin maintained the highest levels it’s seen since June last year, when it last surpassed $30,000.

Ether also gained more than 3.78% to $1,923.59, hovering around below $2,000 level as well.

The Bank of Korea held its interest rates steady at 3.5%, in line with expectations.

The Korean won slightly strengthened immediately after the move to 1319.68 against the U.S. dollar.

South Korea joins the likes of Australia and India in pausing its tightening cycle amid a global inflationary environment as the U.S. Federal Reserve is seen to maintain its hawkish stance.

Semiconductor stocks are “vulnerable” to a downturn after rallying more than 30% in the first quarter, BTIG technical analyst Jonathan Krinsky wrote in a note to clients April 10.

Krinsky said that two weeks ago, in late March, he thought that “the clock was ticking for technology broadly, and that tech stocks would ultimately ‘catch-down’ to many other parts of the market, which would be a negative for the [S&P 500]. We think we are starting to see the negative divergences find their way into tech stocks, including semiconductors,” he wrote.

“In both absolute and relative terms, semis look vulnerable after a potential false breakout above resistance, [and] a potential uptrend break,” the BTIG report said.

All of which bodes poorly for the Nasdaq Composite. In 2022, BTIG said the Nasdaq-100 Index dropped 2.5% or more on 29 occasions — which hasn’t happened once in 2023. “[D]ownside volatility for the Nasdaq is likely to reassert itself over the coming weeks,” Krinsky wrote.

— Scott Schnipper

U.S. natural gas futures rose 8.01% on Monday, recording its best day since March 3. Front-month gas futures settled at $2.172.

Gas stocks kicked off the week on a higher note. The First Trust Natural Gas ETF, led by Pioneer Natural Resources, Comstock, Matador and EQT, gained 1.9% during Monday’s trading session. Comstock gained 6.5% and Pioneer added 5.8%, while Matador and EQT each rose more than 3%. 

So far this year, however, natural gas is down 51.46%.

— Pia Singh, Gina Francolla

U.S. stock futures were little changed on Monday night.

Dow Jones Industrial Average futures rose by 20 points, or 0.06%. S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 futures gained 0.06% and 0.04%, respectively. 

— Hakyung Kim