Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., Sept. 15, 2026. <\/p>\n
Jeenah Moon | Reuters<\/p>\n
U.S. equity futures edged higher early Wednesday ahead of a pivotal interest rate decision from the Federal Reserve<\/a> that could mark the beginning of a new hiking cycle over the next few months.<\/p>\n S&P 500 futures<\/a> and Nasdaq-100 futures<\/a> were up 0.22% and 0.3%, respectively. Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average<\/a> were up 113 points, or 0.2%.<\/p>\n In Asia, markets were mixed in early Wednesday trade. Japan’s\u00a0Nikkei 225<\/a> lost 0.34%, while the Topix added 0.7%. South Korea’s Kospi<\/a> added 0.12, while the small-cap Kosdaq declined 1.05%. Australia’s S&P\/ASX 200<\/a> climbed 0.24%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index<\/a> slid 0.18% while the CSI 300 was down 0.42%.<\/p>\n Futures markets were pricing in a quarter-point hike for Wednesday with 92% odds, according to the CME FedWatch tool<\/a>. Odds of an additional quarter-point hike were 45% for the Fed’s October meeting and 30% for the Fed’s December meeting. The current target rate range is 3.5% to 3.75%.<\/p>\n The central bank’s decision on Wednesday comes amid pressure from the White House to leave rates where they are. Council of Economic Advisers chairman Christopher Phelan told CNBC on Tuesday that it would be a “mistake” for the Fed to raise rates.<\/p>\n “[It] doesn’t make sense to raise rates now in my view,” Phelan said, adding that “inflation data has been in the right direction.”<\/p>\n The 12-month rate on the consumer price index came in at 3.4% in August<\/a>, marking a cooling from the recent high of 4.2% in May<\/a>. On a month-over-month basis, CPI rose 0.4% last month, in line with expectations, though core inflation, which removes the more volatile categories of food and energy, rose 0.3%, which was more than expected.<\/p>\n Crude oil prices rose Tuesday as Saudi Arabia reportedly cancelled some shipments following drone attacks on its key export pipeline. U.S.\u00a0West Texas Intermediate<\/a>\u00a0increased 4.4% to $105.83 per barrel, its highest closing price since May 19.\u00a0Brent<\/a>\u00a0crude futures rose 2.9% to settle at $108.75.<\/p>\n Treasury yields have been spiking on the expectation of higher prices in the economy, with the 10-year<\/a> last slightly above 5% and the 30-year<\/a> at 5.369%.<\/p>\n Amid the tense geopolitical backdrop, U.S. stocks took a dive on Tuesday, with the S&P 500 falling 0.45%, and the technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite losing 0.78%.<\/p>\n Semiconductors, cloud service providers, and other technology stocks were mostly down Tuesday following discussion over the weekend by the heads of large language model companies that they could potentially slow down the pace of product releases.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., Sept.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":849450,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[295193,351478,1246,116,28,122,157,63284,120,8070,801,3471,7174,112,63286,121,12662,1052,63285,117,114,13951,15487,15491,21],"class_list":["post-849449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-lco26x","tag-lco27g","tag-australia","tag-breaking-news-markets","tag-business","tag-business-news","tag-chicago","tag-dow-jones-fut-sep25","tag-dow-jones-industrial-average","tag-hang-seng-index","tag-iran","tag-japan","tag-kospi-index","tag-markets","tag-nasdaq-100-fut-sep25","tag-nasdaq-composite","tag-osaka","tag-prices","tag-sp-500-fut-sep25","tag-sp-500-index","tag-stock-markets","tag-suppress-zephr","tag-u-s-10-year-treasury","tag-u-s-30-year-treasury","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849449","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=849449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849449\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/849450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=849449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=849449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=849449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}