US stocks trade with mild weakness ahead of Fed minutes
|Major US equity indices halted their record run and opened lower on Wednesday as investors eagerly await the release of minutes from the Federal Reserve's latest monetary policy meeting minutes for fresh impetus.
The minutes would be scrutinized for insight about the central bank's near-term monetary policy outlook and possibilities of rate-hike action at its upcoming meeting in March. Meanwhile, a pullback in oil prices also weighed on investors' sentiment and dimmed appetite for riskier assets - like equities.
Against the backdrop of last week's hawkish comments from the Fed Chair Janet Yellen, markets already seems to have priced-in an eventual Fed rate-hike action, sooner-rather-than-later. Hence, it remains to be seen how the minutes would affect the markets and might have prompted investors to take some profits off the table following Tuesday's record closing for the second straight session.
At the time of writing this report, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 40-points to 20,700, while the broader S&P 500 Index lost over 6-point to 2,358. Meanwhile, tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index retreated around 17-points and dropped to 5,849.
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