NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks are drifting Wednesday as the countdown ticks toward this afternoon’s announcement from the Federal Reserve on what it will do with interest rates.
The S&P 500 rose 0.2% and pulled within 1% of its all-time high
, which was set earlier this month. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 31 points, or 0.1%, as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.3% higher.The day’s highlight will likely be what the Federal
Reserve says, if anything, about where interest rates are heading. The Fed raised its main interest rate last month for the first time in three years in hopes of slowing the high inflation that’s squeezing the economy and discouraging Americans broadly.
The widespread expectation on Wall Street is that the Fed will leave the federal funds rate alone at this meeting, and the question is whether it will give hints about what may happen at later meetings. Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh, though, has been adamant since taking over the Fed about wanting it to give fewer indications about its future moves.
Wall Street cares so much about interest rates because they are one of the main levers that set prices for stocks. The other big variable is how much profit companies are making, and more companies joined the list Wednesday of those beating analysts’ expectations for profits during the summer.
GE Healthcare Technologies jumped 8% after delivering both profit and revenue for the summer that surpassed analysts’ expectations. It also raised its forecasts for revenue growth and other financial measures for the full year.
Etsy climbed 6.6% after its profit for the latest quarter blew past analysts’ forecasts. CEO Kruti Patel Goyal said the online marketplace saw growth in active buyers from prior-year levels for the first time in two years, while its active seller base grew at its fastest rate in two years.
Stocks in the artificial-intelligence industry were also relatively solid. They’ve stabilized this week following big swings on worries that high borrowing costs caused by high interest rates will undercut the boom in AI data centers largely built with borrowed money.
AI stocks got an additional boost after a major player in the industry, South Korea’s SK Hynix, soared 10.9% in Seoul following its latest profit report. The seller of memory chips said it’s in the midst of a virtuous cycle of rising AI usage, and it expects demand to continue to outpace supply through 2030.
On Wall Street, Micron Technology jumped 5.2% and was the strongest force lifting the S&P 500. It also sells computer memory.
They helped offset a 3.2% drop for Robinhood Markets, which reported weaker profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected.
Boston Scientific fell 11.1% even though the seller of medical devices reported a milder drop in profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. It gave a forecast for profit in the current quarter that fell short of analysts’ expectations.
In the bond market, Treasury yields held relatively steady ahead of the Fed’s announcement. The yield on the 10-year Treasury remained at 4.99%, where it was late Tuesday.
It’s still near the high end of its range since it started shooting upward from 3.97% before the war with Iran sent oil prices and worries about inflation much higher. But it’s pulled back after topping 5.30% earlier this month and touching its highest level since 2002.
Oil prices rose as uncertainty continues about what will happen in the Middle East and the global energy industry. The price for a barrel of Brent crude, the international standard, climbed 1.8% to $111.33.
In stock markets abroad, South Korea’s Kospi led the way with a jump of 6.6% following SK Hynix’s leap. Japan’s Nikkei 225 rose 1.1%, and France’s CAC 40 added 0.2%.
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AP Writer Elaine Lai contributed to this report.
