Stock futures popped on Thursday morning as investors await updates to the ongoing debt ceiling debate and quarterly results from Walmart (WMT) flashed resilience from the American consumer.

Futures tied to the S&P 500 (^GSPC) rose 0.25%, while futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) added 53 points, or 0.16%. The technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) were up 0.23%.

President Joe Biden left for Asia on Wednesday with no debt ceiling plan in place but enough optimism to help send stocks higher on Wednesday. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told reporters that Wednesday's discussion “set the the stage to carry on further conversations.”

“We are starting to see enough common themes in their views to feel confident that a deal is going to be announced in relatively short order,” Jefferies US Economist Thomas Simmons wrote in a note on Wednesday. “Given the June 1 X-date warnings from Treasury and the time it takes for the legislative process to play out, we could see an announcement of a framework as soon as Sunday when Biden returns from his trip to Japan for the G-7 meetings.”

Meanwhile, Walmart stock ticked up nearly 2% in pre-market trading as America's largest big box retailer reported higher same-store sales growth than Wall Street had anticipated. Walmart also boosted its full-year adjusted earnings per share forecast from a range of $5.90-$6.05 to a range of $6.10-$6.20.

Shares of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba (BABA) traded lower on Thursday morning after reporting mixed quarterly results compared to Wall Street's expectations. The company also announced the spinoff of its cloud business has been approved.

The report comes after several warnings on the consumer, particularly in discretionary spending, have come from the likes of Home Deport (HD) and Target (TGT) earlier in the week.

On the economic front, weekly jobless claims and new home sales are expected out Thursday morning.

Josh is a reporter for Yahoo Finance.

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