Wall Street’s S&P 500 and Nasdaq indexes were on track for a higher open on Wednesday as a ceasefire between Israel and Iran appeared to be holding and investors awaited more comments from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.

The Nasdaq 100 closed at a record high on Tuesday and all three major indexes gained more than 1% as the de-escalation in Middle East hostilities supported risk sentiment. The benchmark S&P 500 index was less than 1% below its all-time peak.

Despite isolated violations of the ceasefire brokered by U.S. President Donald Trump a day earlier, investors remained optimistic that the truce between the two warring nations would last.

"So a lot of our major concerns, at least for right now, shifted into neutral as compared to being headwinds ... that puts this in a place where we’ll take a wait-and-see attitude," said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at B Riley Wealth.

"We’ve heard what Jerome Powell said at Capitol Hill and will likely repeat that today."

In the second day of Powell’s congressional testimony, scheduled at 10:00 a.m. ET, investors will look for any hints on the central bank’s monetary policy path.

This comes a day after Powell emphasized the Fed’s wait-and-watch approach to interest rates as tariff-led price pressures kick in. However, he also said a lower-than-expected inflation reading or weakness in the labor market would push the central bank to cut sooner.

Meanwhile, a surprise deterioration in U.S. consumer confidence on Tuesday kept the door open for an immediate rate cut in July.

New home sales data for May is due at 10:00 a.m. ET.

Money market moves show traders are pricing in about 60 basis points of rate cuts by the end of 2025, with a nearly 70% chance of a 25-bps rate cut in September, according to CME Group’s (NASDAQ:CME) FedWatch tool.

At 08:27 a.m. ET, Dow E-minis were mostly unchanged, S&P 500 E-minis were up 8.75 points, or 0.14%, and Nasdaq 100 E-minis were up 77.5 points, or 0.35%.

Shares of delivery giant FedEx (NYSE:FDX) fell 4.8% in premarket trade after the company forecast quarterly profit below estimates as tariffs weighed on global demand.

Megacap and growth stocks edged higher. Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) and Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) edged up 0.9% each.

NATO leaders endorsed a higher defence spending goal aimed at taking on "profound security threats", in a statement during a brief summit designed to placate Trump.

Trump, who reiterated his commitment to the alliance, has often threatened not to protect NATO members if they fail to meet spending targets.

The Commerce Department’s final take on first-quarter GDP is due on Thursday, while Friday’s Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) report will help investors ascertain the economic effects of Trump’s tariffs that have kept global markets on edge since the start of the year.