Bonds & Stocks
Wall Street traders refrained from making any big bets ahead of the Federal Reserve decision as they braced for whether Jerome Powell will throw cold water on rate-cut hopes. Equity futures fluctuated after the S&P 500 hit at another all-time high. Bonds were little changed Wednesday, having saddled investors with losses this year as expectations faded that the Fed would ease policy sharply. Investors will be focused on Fed officials' forecasts for interest rates - the "dot plot" - which will show how much the committee expects to ease in 2024 and 2025.
Economy
The Federal Reserve will likely avoid signaling an imminent rate cut this week, staying focused on stubborn inflation while keeping one eye on a slowly rising jobless rate.
The Federal Open Market Committee is poised to keep rates in a range of 5.25% to 5.5% at its two-day policy meeting, a two-decade high first reached in July. The rate decision and economic forecasts will be released at 2 p.m. in Washington. Chair Jerome Powell will hold a press conference 30 minutes later. Fed officials are reluctant to lower borrowing costs until they're certain inflation is closing in on 2%, the rate they see as appropriate for a healthy economy.
World
Russia's seaborne crude exports gave up all of the previous week's gains as maintenance work at the Baltic port of Primorsk and strong winds around Kozmino on the Pacific Coast hit shipments from the two most important oil ports.
A three-day gap in the loading program for Primorsk indicates that the work there was planned, but it still cut flows to the lowest since September. To the east, high winds limited loadings from Kozmino again last week, after similar disruption earlier this month. Gusts reached more than 40 miles an hour in the second half of the week.