TOKYO – Wall Street barely budged early Tuesday as more companies post quarterly earnings and the U.S. Federal Reserve prepares to convene its latest monetary policy meeting and talk about interest rates.
Futures for the S&P 500 rose 0.2% before the bell, while futures for the technology-laden Nasdaq climbed 0.3%. Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average were unchanged.
The Fed’s latest policy meeting starts Tuesday and wraps up the following day with an interest rate announcement expected Wednesday afternoon.
Virtually no one expects the U.S. central bank to touch rates this week, but most economists expect the Fed to begin easing its monetary policy at the following meeting in September.
The Fed raised interest rates 11 times beginning in March of 2022 in a bid to tame the inflation that took root as the economy rebounded from the pandemic recession. Fed officials haven’t touched their benchmark rate, which is at a more than two-decade high, in more than a year, a …