US open: Stocks lower ahead of FOMC decision
Wall Street stocks were in the red early on Tuesday as market participants turned their attention to the Fed's two-day policy meeting.
As of 1525 BST, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 1.20% at 30,647.31, while the S&P 500 was 1.17% weaker at 3,854.27 and the Nasdaq Composite came out the gate 0.92% softer at 11,429.13.
The Dow Jones opened 372.37 points lower on Monday, erasing gains recorded in the previous session when major indices managed to snap a two-day losing streak.
However, stocks headed south after the opening bell on Tuesday, with the session's primary focus likely to be on the Federal Reserve, which is expected to raise interest rates by another 75 basis points following its meeting. Odds on a 100-point hike shortened after last week's hot inflation reading.
Central banks across the globe will also draw an amount of investor attention throughout the week, with policymakers in Norway and Japan also set to make decisions over the next few days.
Elsewhere, crude oil prices tumbled at the open, with West Texas Intermediate down 1.60% and changing hands at $84.36 per barrel after the Department of Energy said it will release an additional 10.0m barrels of crude from reserves.
On the macro front, building permits tumbled 10% in August to an annualised rate of 1.51m, well bellow expectations for a reading of 1.61m. According to the Census Bureau, last month's drop was the biggest since April 2020. Housing starts, on the other hand, surged 12.2% month-on-month to an annualised rate of 1.57m, beating expectations for a print of 1.44m.
In the corporate space, architectural services company Apogee Enterprises posted a second-quarter net income of $37.4m, bouncing back from a loss at the same time a year earlier, and revenues of $372.1m.
Reporting by Iain Gilbert at Sharecast.com