U.S stock-index futures edged higher Wednesday as investors awaited minutes of the Federal Reserve’s June policy meeting that briefly rattled markets last month.
What are major indexes doing?
- Futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average YM00, -0.12% rose 37 points, or 0.1%, to 34,497.
- S&P 500 futures ES00, 0.12% were up 8.10 points, or 0.2%, at 4,342.
- Nasdaq-100 futures NQ00, 0.60% advanced 78.25 points, or 0.5%, to 14,853.75.
On Tuesday, the Dow DJIA, -0.60% fell 208.98 points, or 0.6%, to close at 34,577.37. The S&P 500 SPX, -0.20% ended the day down 0.2%, snapping a string of seven consecutive record closes — the longest such run since an eight-day streak ended in 1997. The Nasdaq Composite COMP, +0.17% edged up 0.2% for its 21st record finish of 2021.
What’s driving the market?
Minutes of the Fed’s last policy meeting are due at 2 p.m. Eastern. At its June 15-16th meeting, policymakers moved up their forecasts for a policy interest rate increase and began talking about when it would be appropriate to discuss the unwinding of its monthly asset purchases,
“This was the meeting when the Fed shocked markets by signaling it might take its foot off the accelerator soon, so traders will be looking for clues as to what kind of progress the committee wants to see before taking the next normalization step,” said Marios Hadjikyriacos, investment analyst at XM, in a note.
Investors have heard from virtually every Fed official since the meeting, leaving the market with a good sense of where the central bank stands, the analyst said. The Fed has signaled it want sto see a few more good monthly employment reports “before getting the ball rolling, likely by sending a strong tapering warning in August.”
Investors are also paying attention to a Treasury debt rally that drove yields on the 10-year note TMUBMUSD10Y, 1.319% and 30-year bond TMUBMUSD30Y, 1.953% to their lowest since February on Tuesday.
The 10-year yield continued to fall Wednesday, down 2.8 basis points to 1.346%.
Falling yields were seen underpinning technology and other growth-oriented shares that are more sensitive to interest rates, helping to lift the Nasdaq. The drop in yields was also in keeping with a “risk-off” environment across markets on Tuesday, which also saw oil prices fall back sharply after initially surging in the wake of a breakdown in talks by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and their allies — a group known as OPEC+ — on raising output.