NEW YORK, Sept 20 — US stocks fell early today with the Federal Reserve poised to begin its two-day meeting that is expected to result in another big interest rate hike.
The Fed will announce its latest rate decision tomorrow, with investors fearing that after two straight hikes of 0.75 percentage point, the central bank could even go for a third or perhaps even a full point this time.
With the announcement widely anticipated, analysts have set their sights on the prospect of future increases.
“What the market is really focusing on is what the Fed chairman is likely to say during his press conference or if in tomorrow’s statement there are clues about what the next movement will look like,” said Peter Cardillo of Spartan Capital.
The Fed meeting follows last week’s disappointing consumer price report for August, which showed that housing, food and medical costs continued to rise as soaring prices push annual inflation to 40-year highs.
About 20 minutes into the trading session, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 1.2 per cent to 30,658.82.
The broad-based S&P 500 also lost 1.2 per cent to 3,853.57, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index sank 1.0 per cent to 11,417.86.
In individual stocks, automaker Ford fell 10.0 per cent following a yesterday evening announcement that supply chain issues would cost the company an extra US$1 billion (RM4.5 billion) this quarter. — AFP
