Wall Street takes back some losses from earlier in the week while awaiting Nvidia's profit report

Nvidia reports its earnings for the last quarter after the closing bell. The most influential stock on Wall Street, Nvidia steers the direction of the S&P 500 some days. Fervent demand for its artificial-intelligence chips has helped it briefly top $5 trillion in total value.

Shares of the California company are up about 2% before the market opens.

Target slid 1.9% after its third-quarter profit tumbled and the retailer said that it expects its sales slump to extend through the critical holiday shopping season. The Minneapolis company has struggled to lure inflation-weary shoppers and investors have punished it, sending its shares down 43% over the past year.

Lowe's jumped more than 5% after the home improvement chain beat Wall Street profit targets and raised some of its full-year guidance.

Constellation Energy jumped 3.4% after the U.S. Department of Energy said that it will loan $1 billion to help finance the restart of Constellation's nuclear power plant on Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island that is under contract to supply power to data centers for tech giant Microsoft.

Elsewhere, in Europe at midday, France's CAC 40 ticked up 0.1%, Germany's DAX rose 0.4% and the FTSE 100 in Britain was unchanged.

In Asia, Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 slipped 0.3% to finish at 48,537.70. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng dropped 0.4% to 25,830.65, while the Shanghai Composite rose 0.2% to 3,946.74.

Australia's S&P/ASX 200 shed 0.3% to 8,447.90, while South Korea's Kospi lost 0.6% to 3,929.51. Taiwan's Taiex lost 0.7%.

In energy trading, benchmark U.S. crude lost $1.17, or 1.9%, to $59.50 a barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, fell $1.16 to $63.73 per barrel.