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Apple down 2.3% on move to drop iPhone production boost
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U.S. 10-yr Treasury yields eases from 12-year highs
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Biogen soars on landmark Alzheimer's data
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Futures up: Dow 0.57%, S&P 0.44%, Nasdaq 0.08%
Sept 28 (Reuters) - The Dow and S&P 500 were set to open higher on Wednesday as easing Treasury yields gently lifted rate-sensitive growth stocks, but the gains were capped by losses in Apple Inc after it dropped plans to boost iPhone production.
Futures shed early losses, gaining confidence from a Bank of England decision to restore financial stability by buying as many long-dated government bonds as needed. The move lifted British bond prices and pushed global benchmark yields lower.
The yield on the U.S. 10-year Treasury bill came off 12-year highs to hit the day's low of 3.886%, while Germany's 10-year government bond yield, the benchmark for the euro zone, fell after touching a 11-year high.
"Yields now are approaching the Fed's desired target level of 4 and 4.5%. So once that happens, we should see yields beginning to level off and that should boost equity prices," said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist, Spartan Capital Securities LLC.
Rate-sensitive megacap growth names such as Amazon.com Inc , Microsoft Corp, Meta Platforms Inc and Tesla Inc edged higher 0.2% and 0.3%.
Later in the day, investors will also pay attention to comments from a slew of Fed officials, including Fed Chair Jerome Powell.
Meanwhile, shares of the world's most valuable public company fell 2.3% in premarket trading after Bloomberg reported that Apple told suppliers to curtail efforts to increase assembly of its iPhone 14 products by as many as 6 million units in the second half of this year.
"Apple has got so many pieces and any weakness in Apple demand has big knock-on impacts on many spaces, so chips, processing and the outlook for retail sales even," said Patrick Armstrong, chief investment officer at Plurimi Wealth.
Chipmakers Advanced Micro Devices, Qualcomm Inc Nvidia Corp and Micron Tech were down between 0.3% and 1.9%.
Apple's production cut added fuel to investors worried about the U.S. Federal Reserve's push to aggressively increase borrowing costs to tame stubbornly high inflation even at the risk of slowing down economic growth.
At 8:46 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis were up 167 points, or 0.57%, S&P 500 e-minis were up 16 points, or 0.44%, and Nasdaq 100 e-minis were up 9.25 points, or 0.08%.
In the previous session, Wall Street's main indexes sank deeper into a bear market, with the S&P 500 recording its lowest close in almost two years on rate hike worries.
Bucking the overall slide, Biogen surged 50.4% after its Alzheimer's drug, developed with Japanese partner Eisai, succeeded in slowing cognitive decline.
Shares of Eli Lilly & Co, which is also developing an Alzheimer's drug, rose 8%. (Reporting by Shreyashi Sanyal, Susan Mathew and Ankika Biswas in Bengaluru; Editing by Vinay Dwivedi and Arun Koyyur)
