A specialist trader works on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., Sept. 15, 2025. <\/p>\n
Brendan McDermid | Reuters<\/p>\n
Stock futures were little changed late Tuesday as traders prepared for a much-anticipated monetary policy decision and an even more important policy outlook from the Federal Reserve on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
S&P 500 futures<\/a> added 0.02%, while Nasdaq-100 futures<\/a> advanced 0.02%. Futures contracts tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average<\/a> were up 13 points, or 0.03%.<\/p>\n Traders almost universally expect the Federal Reserve will lower interest rates<\/a> on Wednesday, a move that could boost the U.S. economy amid signs the labor market is slowing even as inflation stays stubbornly above the central bank’s 2% target. Policymakers will also give more insight into their outlook for rates over the next year or so in the closely-watched “dot plot” grid that accompanies their quarterly Summary of Economic Projections.<\/p>\n Investors will also watch for any policy dissents from Fed policymakers after two such disagreeements at the last meeting in July. Traders have priced in a 96% chance that the Fed will cut rates by 25 basis points, or a quarter percentage point, and just 4% odds that the market will get a half point reduction Wednesday, according to numbers derived from interest rate futures trading at<\/a> the CME Group.<\/p>\n Paul McCulley, former managing director at PIMCO told CNBC’s “The Exchange” on Tuesday that a more conservative, quarter-point rate cut is the most likely outcome of the Federal Open Market Committee’s meeting.\u00a0<\/p>\n “Quite frankly, I don’t know how I would explain [a 50 basis point cut] in the current context without saying the labor market really is worrying me intensely, and I don’t think that’s the message that Chair Powell wants to communicate \u2014 at least not now,” McCulley said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Stocks ended little changed by the end of Tuesday’s session.\u00a0<\/p>\n The S&P 500<\/a> hit a fresh intraday record before pulling back later in the day, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average<\/a> shed 125.55 points to close 0.27% lower at 45,757.90. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite<\/a> failed to score any fresh gain Tuesday too, after closing at record on Monday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A specialist trader works on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":233535,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[133,81,91320,144,51,135,91322,143,50,6769,91321,145,134,52,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-233534","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-breaking-news-markets","9":"tag-business-news","10":"tag-dow-jones-fut-sep25","11":"tag-dow-jones-industrial-average","12":"tag-headlines","13":"tag-markets","14":"tag-nasdaq-100-fut-sep25","15":"tag-nasdaq-composite","16":"tag-news","17":"tag-prices","18":"tag-sp-500-fut-sep25","19":"tag-sp-500-index","20":"tag-stock-markets","21":"tag-top-stories","22":"tag-united-states"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115219035904425105","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233534\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}