Futures dither after Wall St rout; Fed rate verdict in focus By Reuters

(Reuters) – Futures tracking Wall Street’s main indexes were flat to slightly higher on Monday after a pounding in the prior session and ahead of a widely expected pause in Federal Reserve interest rate hikes later this week.

A slump in chipmakers on concerns of weak demand and bruised mega-cap growth stocks due to rising Treasury yields pushed the , Nasdaq and Dow tumbling between 0.8% and 1.5% on Friday, their worst single-day fall since Aug. 24.

Traders almost unanimously expect the Fed to keep rates unchanged at 5.25% to 5.5% at its meeting on Wednesday, while the odds for another pause in November is at 69%, according to the CME FedWatch Tool.

A slew of recent hotter-than-expected economic data has eased recession concerns without raising fears of a September rate hike. However, a jump in energy prices emerged as a threat to inflation that still remains above the Fed’s 2% target.

“Further rate hikes would risk sending the economy into a hard landing scenario,” said Thomas Simons, U.S. economist at Jefferies.

“Instead, the Fed can look to a strategy of maintaining current policy rates for a long time as the best way to administer restrictive monetary policy to the economy.”

While Goldman Sachs expects the central bank to lift its economic growth projections this week, much like other big investors, such as J.P. Morgan Asset Management and Janus Henderson Investors, it expects rates to have peaked.

Besides the Fed, the Bank of England and Bank of Japan are also due to give their monetary policy decisions this week.

At 5:29 a.m. ET, were up 12 points, or 0.03%, were up 3.5 points, or 0.08%, and were up 21.75 points, or 0.14%.

Micron Technology (NASDAQ:) rebounded 2.4% in premarket trading, following Friday’s rout, after Deutsche Bank upgraded its rating on the stock to “buy” from “hold”.

Asset management giant Blackstone (NYSE:) Inc and vacation lodging platform are set to join the S&P 500 ahead of the start of trading. The stocks were down 0.5% and 0.1%, respectively.