Around 4 p.m., the Dow Jones gained 0.30%, the Nasdaq gained 0.01% and the broader S&P 500 index gained 0.05%.
The New York Stock Exchange opened slightly higher on Wednesday, showing a wait-and-see attitude before the end of the monetary policy meeting of the American Central Bank (Fed), which could decide on a further reduction in interest rates.
Around 3:00 p.m. GMT, the Dow Jones gained 0.30%, the Nasdaq index gained 0.01% and the broader S&P 500 index gained 0.05%.
“We have a highly anticipated decision this afternoon, the consensus being a reduction in interest rates,” Art Hogan of B. Riley Wealth Management commented to AFP.
The meeting of the Fed’s monetary policy committee (FOMC) began Tuesday morning in Washington and the decision will be published on Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. GMT, before a press conference by the president of the institution Jerome Powell (7:30 p.m. GMT).
The vast majority of market participants are counting on a further cut of a quarter of a percentage point after the September and November reductions, according to CME FedWatch monitoring tool.
“The market will only be upset if (the Fed) does something outside the consensus” such as “not cutting rates” or “expecting one or two cuts next year instead of three,” argued Mr. Hogan.
“The big unknown is the form that the projections relating to Fed policy will take (…),” also underlined in a note Patrick O’Hare, of Briefing.com.
Fed Chairman Jerome Powell recently said that the US Central Bank “could afford to be a little more cautious” due to the strength of the economy. And one of the governors, Michelle Bowman, judged the risks linked to inflation “more significant” than those linked to unemployment.
Inflation has started to rise again over the last two months in the United States, after following an encouraging trajectory towards the 2% target set by the Fed.
The progression of the CPI consumer price index – on which pensions are indexed – rebounded in November to 2.7% over one year.
On the bond market, the yield on 10-year US government bonds stood at 4.38%, compared to 4.40% the day before at closing.
On the business side, the Dow Jones rebounded slightly after experiencing its ninth negative session in a row on Tuesday, a sequence that the New York market had not experienced since 1978.
The index was notably weighed down by the setbacks of the UnitedHealth group after the murder of the boss of its health insurance subsidiary UnitedHealthcare. On Wednesday, UnitedHealth, the largest weighting of the Dow Jones, advanced 3.11%.
In decline on Tuesday, and having lost more than 12% since the beginning of November, the semiconductor giant Nvidia regained some color (+3.55%).
Other big names in the sector were also moving in the green, like Micron (+2.50%), Intel (+0.54%) and AMD (+0.41%).
Elsewhere on the stock market, the food group General Mills lost ground (-2.93%) after quarterly results better than expected, but annual forecasts revised downwards.
Tesla fell (-2.14%). Since the American presidential election, the group has benefited from the electoral victory of Donald Trump, to whom the boss of the car manufacturer, Elon Musk, is close.
The travel booking platform Expedia was sought after (+1.81%) after receiving a good rating from Bank of America.
