Tuesday's early trade: Wall Street edges higher as focus shifts to Fed

US stocks posted small gains on Tuesday as investors focused on the Federal Reserve's policy meeting, while looking past President Donald Trump's historic summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. The two leaders pledged to work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, with Washington committing to providing security guarantees, but their joint statement gave few details on how the goals would be achieved.
While some of the defence stocks such as Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman fell following the summit, the broader markets saw little impact. "Equities are really looking past the trade and geopolitical issues, and the focus is more on fundamentals," said Terry Sandven, chief equity strategist, US Bank Wealth Management in Minneapolis.
The Fed is widely expected to raise interest rates for the second time this year, when it concludes its policy meeting on Wednesday. Data on Tuesday showed US consumer prices rose marginally in May amid a slowdown in the pace of increases in the cost of gasoline and the underlying trend continued to suggest moderate inflation in the economy.
"The macro environment remains in a Goldilocks-like zone, technical trendlines are improving and performance is becoming more broad-based, and that typically presents a favorable backdrop for stocks to trend higher." At 11:34 a.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 7.07 points, or 0.03 percent, at 25,315.24, the S&P 500 was up 3.21 points, or 0.12 percent, at 2,785.21 and the Nasdaq Composite was up 29.07 points, or 0.38 percent, at 7,689.00.
The biggest percentage gainer on the S&P 500 was Twitter, which surged 6.1 percent after J.P. Morgan raised its price target by $11 to $50. Tesla rose 4.6 percent after Keybanc raised its estimates for Model 3 deliveries for the second quarter and full year.