Key Events
Pinned Post
The stock market was rallying Wednesday afternoon as Wall Street bought the latest dip ahead of the Federal Reserve’s interest rate decision.
The Dow rose 300 points, or 0.7%. The S&P 500 jumped 0.8%. The Nasdaq Composite gained 1.1%.
The yield on the 2-year Treasury note was up to 4.08%. The 10-year yield was up to 4.3%.
The Federal Open Market Committee is widely expected to keep interest rates steady. But the release of the central bank’s latest forecasts and comments from Fed Chair Jerome Powell will be closely watched.
“The FOMC meeting announcement will hit the wires at 2:00 p.m. ET shortly before Fed Chair Powell’s mid-afternoon press conference (2:30 p.m. ET) which will almost certainly be the ‘main event’ of the trading session as investors look for clarity on monetary policy outlook given the recent escalation in trade war developments and the subsequent sense of market uncertainty that has come with it,” writes Sevens Report Research’s Tom Essaye.
The top S&P sectors were consumer discretionary, technology, industrials, and energy. They were followed closely by communication services and financials. Consumer staples, real estate, and health care were the laggards.
Market breadth was decent, with the Invesco S&P 500 Equal Weight ETF up 0.5%. Roughly 340 S&P 500 stocks were trading higher.
