Wall Street drifts in premarket trading while Target tumbles on sluggish sales and a CEO change

Key Points

• Asian shares experienced a decline, mirroring losses on Wall Street primarily driven by technology companies like Nvidia, which dropped 3.5%.
• The Japanese Nikkei 225 fell by 1.7% due to decreased exports and significant losses in computer chip makers.
• The Federal Reserve's upcoming speech by Jerome Powell is highly anticipated, with traders hoping for hints at potential interest rate cuts.
• Concerns about high stock prices and the risk of stagflation may influence the Fed's future decisions, as strategists warn against overly optimistic expectations.

Wall Street continues to drift Wednesday while news of a leadership change at Target took some of the spotlight away from the latest batch of corporate earnings reports.

Futures for the S&P 500 were 0.2% lower before the bell, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average inched back just 0.1%. Nasdaq futures fell 0.3%.

Target tumbled 9% after the struggling Minneapolis retailer said that CEO Brian Cornell plans to step down Feb. 1. Chief Operating Officer Michael Fiddelke, a 20-year company veteran, will succeed Cornell, who helped reenergize the company but has struggled to turn around weak sales in a more competitive post-COVID retail landscape.

Target also reported Wednesday that comparable store sales fell 1.9% in the period, a measure that has been flat or declined in eight out of the past 10 quarters.

On the winning side was home improvement retailer Lowe's, which jumped 3.4% after it beat Wall Street's sales and profit expectations. Lowe's also announced that it was acquiring Foundation Building Materials, a distributor of interior building products, for about $8.8 billion.

Estee Lauder slid 7.5% after the makeup and beauty company reported an 8% decline in sales in fiscal 2025 and a significant drop in adjusted per-share profit.

The week’s biggest news for Wall Street is likely arriving on Friday, when Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell will give a highly anticipated speech in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The setting has been home to big policy announcements from the Fed in the past, and the hope on Wall Street is that Powell will hint that an interest rate cut is coming soon.

The Fed has kept its main interest rate steady this year, primarily because of the fear of the possibility that President Donald Trump’s tariffs could push inflation higher. But a surprisingly weak report on job growth across the country may be superseding that.

In Europe, France's CAC 40 ticked up 0.2%, while Germany's DAX dipped 0.3%. Britain's FTSE 100 added more than 0.4% despite a report that said inflation in the U.K. rose more than expected through July, in part due to soaring airfares and food prices.

Tokyo's benchmark Nikkei 225 declined 1.5% after Japan reported that its exports fell slightly more than expected in July, pressured by higher tariffs on goods shipped to the U.S. Imports also fell from a year ago.

Tracking Tuesday's decline by Wall Street favorite Nvidia and other artificial-intelligence stars, Japanese computer-chip equipment makers Advantest plunged 5.7% and Disco Corp. dropped 4.9%. Chipmaker Tokyo Electron lost 1.4%. and Lasertec Corp. lost 1.7%.

The Taiex in Taiwan fell 3.0% after chip maker TSMC dropped 4.2%.

Hong Kong's Hang Seng gained nearly 0.2%, while the Shanghai Composite index gained 1.0% after China’s central bank opted to keep its benchmark interest rate unchanged, as markets had expected.

Chinese toy company Pop Mart International Group's shares traded in Hong Kong soared 12.5% after its CEO said its annual revenue could top $4 billion this year, more than quadrupling after more than doubling in the first half of the year. Its CEO also announced that the company was releasing a mini version of its popular Labubu dolls.

South Korea's Kospi dropped 0.7% after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un condemned South Korean-U.S. military drills that began this week. He vowed a rapid expansion of his nuclear forces to counter rivals, according to North Korean state media.