Traders work after a Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, US, on Wednesday, June 17, 2026. <\/p>\n
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images<\/p>\n
U.S. stock futures ticked higher on Wednesday night after the Federal Reserve indicated the possibility of a rate hike<\/a> this year.<\/p>\n S&P 500 futures<\/a> and Nasdaq 100 futures<\/a> climbed 0.2% and 0.4%, respectively. Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average<\/a> rose by 73 points, or slightly more than 0.1%.<\/p>\n Asia-Pacific markets opened mixed, with South Korea’s Kospi and Japan’s Nikkei 225 jumping to fresh records.<\/p>\n The\u00a0Kospi<\/a> rose 0.89%. Index heavyweight SK Hynix advanced 3.45% to notch a fresh high, while Samsung Electronics rose 1.23%. The small-cap Kosdaq declined 0.5%.<\/p>\n Japan’s Nikkei 225<\/a>\u00a0traded 1.79% higher to rise above 71,000 for the first time, while the Topix was up 1.48%. Australia’s benchmark\u00a0S&P\/ASX 200<\/a>\u00a0slid 0.29%. <\/p>\n Hong Kong’s\u00a0Hang Seng index<\/a> was down 0.76%, while the mainland’s CSI 300 was flat.<\/p>\n Wednesday marked the first meeting of the Federal Reserve with Kevin Warsh at the helm of the U.S. central bank. At the conclusion of the meeting, the Fed kept the benchmark federal funds rate unchanged and anchored in a range of between 3.5% and 3.75%.<\/p>\n Policymakers’ “dot plot” revealed that several Fed officials now see interest rates increasing in 2026. The median estimate for the year-end interest rate now stands at 3.8%, up from 3.4% in prior projections from March, suggesting that at least one rate hike could be in the picture in 2026.<\/p>\n Complicating the forecast was Warsh’s decision to abstain<\/a> from submitting a rate forecast.<\/p>\n Following the meeting, stocks fell across the board. The Dow<\/a>, which had hit a new all-time intraday high earlier in the day, ultimately declined 507.12 points, or 0.98%. The S&P 500<\/a> fell 1.21%, while the Nasdaq Composite<\/a> lost 1.34%.<\/p>\n On the other hand, bond yields jumped. The two-year Treasury<\/a> yield hit a high of 4.22%.<\/p>\n “The Fed held rates steady but spoiled the mood with a much more hawkish dot plot. Elevated inflation makes that understandable, but the committee is far from united, with only about half still penciling in rate hikes later this year,” said Sonu Varghese, chief macro strategist at Carson Group. “The bigger point is that policy still looks loose for an economy where inflation remains a problem and the labor market is stabilizing.”<\/p>\n “The market doesn’t like regime change,” added David Zervos, chief market strategist at Jefferies, on CNBC’s “Closing Bell: Overtime<\/a>” on Wednesday afternoon.<\/p>\n Accenture<\/a> and Kroger<\/a> will report earnings before Thursday’s opening bell. Traders will also watch out for May’s leading indicators and June’s Philadelphia Fed Index reading, alongside initial jobless claims from the week ended June 13.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Traders work after a Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting on the floor of the New York Stock…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":710630,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[150834,116,28,122,63284,120,8070,3471,45588,7174,46705,112,63286,121,7173,1052,63285,117,8071,114,13951,15486,21],"class_list":["post-710629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-accenture-plc","tag-breaking-news-markets","tag-business","tag-business-news","tag-dow-jones-fut-sep25","tag-dow-jones-industrial-average","tag-hang-seng-index","tag-japan","tag-kevin-warsh","tag-kospi-index","tag-kroger-co","tag-markets","tag-nasdaq-100-fut-sep25","tag-nasdaq-composite","tag-nikkei-225-index","tag-prices","tag-sp-500-fut-sep25","tag-sp-500-index","tag-sp-asx-200","tag-stock-markets","tag-suppress-zephr","tag-u-s-2-year-treasury","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=710629"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710629\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/710630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=710629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=710629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=710629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}