US open: Stocks trade lower as traders look ahead to outcome of FOMC meeting

dl wall street st new york city nyc nyse stock exchange ny dow jones nasdaq sp finance us usa united states of america — Wall StreetSharecast photo / Josh White

Wall Street stocks registered early losses on Tuesday as market participants looked ahead to the outcome of the Federal Reserve's two-day policy meeting and digested more mega-cap earnings.

As of 1525 BST, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.39% at 38,238.02, while the S&P 500 lost 0.17% to 5,107.34 and the Nasdaq Composite came out the gate 0.20% weaker at 15,950.49.

The Dow opened 148.07 points lower on Tuesday, erasing yesterday's gains.

Central bank policymakers will meet for their two-day policy meeting on Tuesday, with their latest interest rate decision set to be revealed on Wednesday, with the Fed broadly anticipated to keep interest rates steady. However, investors have grown worried that chairman Jerome Powell's post-meeting comments may be more hawkish than originally thought as a result of a run of hotter-than-expected inflation reports.

Corporate earnings were again in focus on Tuesday, with fast food giant McDonald's delivering mixed first-quarter results on Tuesday as restructuring costs weighed on profits, Coca-Cola lifting annual sales forecasts after first-quarter numbers at the US giant topped expectations, Restaurant Brands topping estimates following a revival in demand at its Burger King sites, and Eli Lilly hiking its full-year forecasts by $2.0bn on the back of a strong performance from its weight-loss drug.

Still to come, Amazon, Advanced Micro Devices, Pinterest, Super Micro and Starbucks will publish results after the close of trading.

On the macro front for Tuesday, S&P Case-Shiller's February housing price index showed that home prices jumped 6.4% year-on-year in February, another increase after the prior month's annual gain of 6% and the fastest rate of price growth since November 2022. The ten-city composite rose 8%, up from a 7.4% increase in January, while the 20-city composite posted an annual gain of 7.3%, up from a 6.6% advance reading in January.

Elsewhere, the Conference Board's consumer confidence index retreated to 97.0 in April from a downwardly revised 103.1 reading for March, the present situation index declined from 146.8 to 142.9, while the expectations index fell from a slightly upwardly revised reading of 74.0 last month to 66.4 in April.

Finally, the cost of employing workers picked up modestly at the start of 2024 amid a jump in benefits, according to the Department of Labor, which said the country's employment cost index had advanced by 1.2% quarter-on-quarter, following a 0.9% rise over the prior three months and compared to a 1.0% increase forecast by economists. Wage and salary growth was steady at 1.1% in the quarter, despite gains in both the private and public sectors, while that of benefits sped up from 0.7% to 1.1%.

Reporting by Iain Gilbert at Sharecast.com

Dow Jones - Risers

3M Co. (MMM) $96.48 4.69%
Coca-Cola Co. (KO) $62.44 0.65%
Apple Inc. (AAPL) $174.54 0.60%
Procter & Gamble Co. (PG) $162.48 0.50%
JP Morgan Chase & Co. (JPM) $194.12 0.43%
Dow Chemical Co. (DOW) $57.89 0.16%
Merck & Co. Inc. (MRK) $130.14 0.02%
Dowdupont Inc. (DWDP) $0.00 0.00%
Travelers Company Inc. (TRV) $212.88 -0.01%
Boeing Co. (BA) $173.13 -0.21%