S&P 500 futures rose Wednesday, boosted by a positive forecast from Oracle, as traders looked ahead to the release of new inflation data. Futures tied to the broad benchmark added 0.4%, as did Nasdaq 100 futures. Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 65 points, or 0.1%. Shares of Oracle surged more than 30% after the tech old guard reported that multicloud database revenue from Amazon, Google and Microsoft grew at the eye-popping rate of 1,529% in its last quarter, fueled by demand for AI servers. Investors were encouraged by the upbeat cloud forecast even as the latest earnings fell short. “We signed four multi-billion-dollar contracts with three different customers in Q1,” Oracle CEO Safra Catz said. “It was an astonishing quarter — and demand for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure continues to build.” Nvidia and AMD were also higher in the premarket, as investors appeared to pile into the artificial intelligence trade once again. But traders will stay on their toes as they await the the latest producer price index reading. This report, alongside Thursday’s more closely watched consumer price index reading, will offer more insight on the state of inflation in the U.S. economy. Economists expect the report to show monthly increases of 0.3% across the board, according to Dow Jones. This includes both the headline all-items indexes, as well as the core readings that exclude volatile food and energy prices. If this materializes, it would push the annual headline CPI rate to 2.9%, while the core reading is expected to stay unchanged at 3.1%. If these numbers come in around their estimates, all should go according to plan for the Federal Reserve to deliver another rate cut at its September meeting, said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at B. Riley Wealth Management. “In general, the inflation news over the next couple of days would have to be remarkably hotter than anticipated for anything to change the narrative that we’re getting a rate cut in September,” he said to CNBC. Tuesday was a record-setting day on Wall Street, as all three major indexes notched new closing highs. The Nasdaq had also scored a fresh all-time intraday high during the trading session. Treasury yields edged higher on Wednesday, as investors awaited two key inflation reports that could feed into the Federal Reserve’s looming monetary policy update. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury was more than 1 basis points higher at 4.087%. The yield on the 30-year Treasury meanwhile jumped more than 2 basis points to trade at 4.738%, and the shorter-maturity 2-year Treasury saw its yield add 1 basis point to hold at 3.552%. Asia-Pacific markets rose Wednesday, tracking gains on Wall Street, as hopes for a rate cut by the Federal Reserve rose, while investors also assessed August inflation data from China. Mainland China’s CSI 300 was up 0.21%, closing at 4,445.36. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index advanced 1.04% while the Hang Seng Tech index was up 1.82%. Hong Kong-listed shares of Alibaba Group rose 2.1%, after hitting a near-four-year high earlier in the session. This comes after Chinese humanoid startup X Square Robot announced that it had secured around $100 million in a funding round led by Alibaba Cloud. Japan’s Nikkei 225 benchmark climbed 0.87% to close at an all-time high of 43,837.67 while the Topix rose 0.6% to close the trading session at 3,140.97. South Korea’s Kospi index rose 1.67% to close at 3,314.53 after notching a record high, advancing for a seventh straight session. Over in Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 was 0.31% higher, ending at 8,830.4. Oil prices rose on Wednesday after Israel attacked Hamas leadership in Qatar, Poland shot down drones and the U.S. made a push for new sanctions on buyers of Russian oil, but concerns over crude oversupply capped further gains. Brent crude futures were up 56 cents, or 0.8%, at $66.95 a barrel, and U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures gained 56 cents, or 0.9%, to $63.19 a barrel. Prices had settled up 0.6% in the previous trading session after Israel said it had attacked Hamas leadership in Doha. Both benchmarks rose nearly 2% shortly after the attack, but then retraced much of their gains. Gold prices hovered near an all-time high on Wednesday, buoyed by expectations of a U.S. interest rate cut this month, while market participants awaited U.S. inflation data for clues on the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy path. Spot gold was up 0.5% at $3,643.78 per ounce, after hitting a record high of $3,673.95 on Tuesday. U.S. gold futures for December delivery were flat at $3,682.30. “Gold’s gains come on the back of expectations of Fed rate cuts, supported by signs of cooling in the U.S. labour market, which have weakened the dollar,” Ricardo Evangelista, senior analyst at ActivTrades said.