U.S. stock futures were higher Wednesday, helped by Apple ( AAPL ) beating earnings expectations and Yahoo ( YHOO ) announcing a spin-off of its remaining holdings in Alibaba Group ( BABA ) into a newly formed investment company.
At 2:00 p.m. E.T., the U.S. Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee is expected to leave the Federal Funds Rate – the overnight rate that banks pay each other for borrowing reserves – unchanged at 0% to 0.25% according to data compiled by Econoday.
AAPL was higher nearly 8% and YHOO rose over 5%. BABA shed 1%.
Meanwhile, the American Depository Receipts of the National Bank of Greece ( NBG ) plummeted 22.7% as the new Greek government promised to renegotiate the terms of its bailout by its Eurozone partners and move away from austerity measures that were part of those terms.