US pre-open: Major indices look set to claw back more losses

As of 1240 BST, Dow Jones futures were up 0.90%, while S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 futures had the indices opening 1.27% and 1.51% higher, respectively.

The Dow closed 294.39 points higher on Tuesday, snapping a three-day losing streak that culminated in the blue-chip index shedding more than 1,000 points on Monday.

Trade Nation's David Morrison said: "US stock index futures were pushing higher in early trade this morning, raising hopes that the bad times are now in the rearview mirror. Today's moves build on yesterday's gains which saw all the majors add on around 1% each, to mark the first positive session since this time last week. This is an encouraging start. But it's worth noting that there was a significant pullback in the last two hours of last night's trading. This was led by the tech sector, and saw both the Nasdaq 100 and the S&P 500 give back around 2% of earlier gains.

"So there will be some relief that equity markets are on the front foot first thing. But will they be able to keep up the positive momentum into the US open and beyond?"

On the macro front, weekly mortgage applications numbers will be out at 1300 BST, while consumer credit change figures were slated for release at 2000 BST.

In the corporate space, Airbnb shares were sharply lower in pre-market after posting second-quarter results that fell short of expectations, while Lyft announced its first-ever quarter in the black on Wednesday on the back of a record number of rides, but shares tanked in pre-market trading as guidance for the current quarter disappointed investors, and Tesla said it will issue a software update to nearly 1.7m cars in China to fix an issue with the bonnet latch that affected a similar number of vehicles in the US last month.

Disney, CVS Health and Shopify were all scheduled to report earnings on Wednesday.

Reporting by Iain Gilbert at Sharecast.com