NEW YORK: Wall Street stocks dipped early Wednesday ahead of a Federal Reserve decision on interest rates and a deluge of earnings from tech giants.
While the Fed is expected to keep rates unchanged, there is intrigue over whether Chair Jerome Powell intends to stay on the Fed board when his term as chairman ends.
A Senate panel is scheduled to vote Wednesday on whether to confirm Powell’s designated successor, Kevin Warsh.
After the market closes, tech giants Microsoft, Amazon, Meta and Google parent Alphabet are all due to report results.
READ MORE: Wall St indexes enter earnings-heavy week on cautious footing
About 20 minutes into trading, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.5 percent at 48,877.75.
The broad-based S&P 500 slid 0.2 percent to 7,126.98, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index slipped 0.1 percent to 24,635.78.
The tech earnings reports come as investors grapple with questions about whether companies are building too much costly artificial intelligence capacity.
Interactive Brokers’ Steve Sosnick said investors may not welcome announcements of trimmed investment “because that would imply that maybe this is just not as profitable of a venture as everybody thinks.”
Sosnick also noted that oil prices keep rising as the Middle East war grinds on but stocks are “ignoring” the increase.
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