Devik Jain, Medha Singh

(Reuters). Wall Street’s key indexes will rebound Wednesday, following a selloff triggered concern over rising inflation. Merck saw its shares jump on approval of the COVID-19 tablet.

Merck & Co Inc gained 3.8% in premarket trade after a panel of advisers to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration narrowly voted to recommend the agency authorize the drugmaker’s antiviral pill to treat COVID-19.

U.S. stock fell Tuesday morning after Jerome Powell (Federal Reserve Chair) testified before the Senate Banking Committee that he doesn’t consider inflation to be “transitory”.

He stated that the U.S. central banking would look into bringing forward plans to taper its bond buying program when it meets in two weeks.

Markets were already worried about Omicron coronavirus’ spread and potential impact on global recovery. The comments that appeared hawkish served to double the blow.

“At this point, COVID does not appear to be the biggest long-term Street fear, although it could have the largest impact if the new (or next) variant turns out to be worse than expected,” Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst for S&P and Dow Jones indices, said in a note.

That honor goes out to inflation. It continues to be fed supply shortages and labor costs as well consumers who haven’t pulled back.

Investors also expected a Fed Report, better known as “The Beige Book”, which will provide more insight into central bank’s inflation stance. It is expected to be available by 2:00 pm. ET (1900 GMT).

Tourism and leisure stocks recovered, with Norwegian Cruise Line (NYSE 🙂 Corp., Carnival (NYSE 🙂 Corp. Royal Caribbean (NYSE) Rising more than 2.5% Each

Occidental Petroleum (NYSE) was the leader among energy stocks with 3.2% gains. This is due to oil prices rising over 4% before the OPEC meeting. After Tuesday’s steep fall, shares of Wall Street major lenders moved up as well. [O/R]

At 6:35 am. ET was up 289 points or 0.84%

These were up 53.75, or 1.18%. They also rose 223.75, or 1.39%, due to gains in the mega-cap tech giants Amazon.com, Apple Inc (NASDAQ;), Tesla (NASDAQ.) Inc and Alphabet, Google’s owner (NASDAQ.) Inc. Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:), which increased between 1.2% – 1.7%

Powell is scheduled to also testify in a House Financial Services Committee hybrid hearing, which will take place at 10:10 a.m. ET.

The economic data side, the U.S. November private payrolls readings will be closely monitored later in today to assess the economy’s health.

Salesforce.com Inc (NYSE 🙂 was one of many stocks to fall 6% as its current-quarter profits were lower than anticipated due to fierce competition from Microsoft.