US equities rose on Wed, after the Fed’s minutes from its most recent meeting revealed little change in the projected path of monetary policy from what its members had previously communicated.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 191.66 pts or 0.6% to close at 32120.28. The broader S&P 500 index rose 0.95%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite advanced 1.51%. The small cap Russell 2000 gained 1.95%.
The CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) declined by 1.08 pts to close at 28.37 on Wed as investor fear waned after the minutes left markets unroiled.
Megacap tech stocks rose on Wed, including Apple (APPL US, +0.11%), Microsoft (MSFT US, +1.12%), Amazon (AMZN US, +2.57%), Nvidia (NVDA US, +5.08%), and Meta Platforms (FB US, +1.41%). One exception was Alphabet (GOOGL US, -0.16%).
After the market closed, Nvidia (NVDA US, +5.08%) gave a weak forecast due to Chinese supply-chain woes and the war in Ukraine. The stock fell 6.85% in after-hours trade on Wed.
Elon Musk is boosting the equity component of his $44b Twitter (TWTR US, +3.91%) bid by $6.25b, dropping plans to partly fund it with a similar-size margin loan tied to his Tesla (TSLA US, +4.88%) stake.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury note slipped 0.54 basis points (bps) to 2.7452%, while the yield on the 2-year Treasuries, which are more sensitive to imminent policy moves, rose 1.33 bps to 2.4919%.
The iShares iBoxx High Yield Corporate Bond ETF (HYG US) rose 1.52%. The front-month Brent and WTI futures closed up 47 cents at US$114.03/bbl and 56 cents at US$110.33/bbl respectively.
The ICE dollar index (DXY), which measures the strength of the greenback against a basket of currencies, fell 0.20% to 102.056. T
he most actively traded US gold futures (Jun) contracts settled down $19.10, or 1.02%, at US$1846.3oz. July silver, which is the most actively traded silver futures, fell $0.19, or 0.88%, to end at US$21.87/oz.
European equity markets finished higher on Wed. The UK FTSE gained 0.51%, France's CAC 40 rose 0.73%, while the German DAX advanced 0.63%.
Marks & Spencer (MKS LN, +4.8%) reversed an earlier decline on Wed after the UK retailer reported results and highlighted cost pressures and consumer uncertainty in its outlook for the year ahead.