US equities rose on Wed after the Federal Reserve said it will move more quickly to wind down its massive bond-buying program and signaled a faster pace of interest rate increases in 2022. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 383.25 pts or 1.08% higher to close at 35,927.43. The broader S&P 500 index rose 1.63%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite advanced 2.15%. The small cap Russell 2000 edged higher by 1.65%.
Ten of the 11 sectors in the S&P 500 posted gains, led by a rise in shares of technology and health care companies while the energy shares fell.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury note notched up 1.54 basis points (bps) to 1.4565%. The iShares iBoxx High Yield Corporate Bond ETF (HYG US) rose 0.38%.
Shares of Chinese US ADRs fell on Wed to the lowest since Mar 2020 on concerns that the US government will hit more companies with investment and export sanctions. The Invesco Golden Dragon China ETF (PGJ US) fell 3.35% while Alibaba (BABA US, -3.25%) and JD.com (JD US, -5.14%) shares fell.
The most actively traded US gold futures (Feb) contracts settled down $7.80, or 0.4%, at US$1,764.50/oz.
March silver, which is the most actively traded silver futures, fell 37.9 cents, or 1.7%, to end at US$21.545/oz.
The ICE dollar index (DXY), which measures the strength of the greenback against a basket of currencies, fell 0.06% to 96.511.
The front-month Brent and WTI futures closed up 18 cents at US$73.88/bbl and 14 cents at US$70.87/bbl respectively.
European equity markets finished mixed on Wed. The UK FTSE lost 0.66%, France's CAC 40 rose 0.47%, while the German DAX advanced 0.15%.
Daily Covid cases reached new records in the UK and South Africa. The majority of London cases already are omicron, and England's chief medical officer said that a lot of Covid records will be broken in coming weeks.