Stocks waver as investors await Fed meeting minutes: Live updates

The Dow Jones Industrial Average inched lower Wednesday as Wall Street resumed a holiday-shortened week and looked to Federal Reserve meeting minutes coming in the afternoon.

The 30-stock average lost 57 points, or 0.2%. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite each shed 0.1%.

Minutes from the June 13-14 Fed meeting due Wednesday afternoon could provide more details on where monetary policy is heading. While the decision to hold interest rates steady was not a surprise, indications that members see at least two more hikes before the end of the year did catch the market off guard. Since then, Fed Chair Jerome Powell and other policymakers have provided further indications that they see more work ahead before inflation is brought back down to an acceptable level.

“It’s clear that it’s a tug of war at the Fed. The question is, how deep is it?,” said Quincy Krosby, chief global strategist at LPL Financial. “Anything that the market can glean in terms of how deep is the divide within the Fed will be important.”

Data released Wednesday morning showed factory orders were weaker than expected in May. Later in the week, investors will watch for a batch of employment and wage data for insights into the strength of the labor market.

Investors are coming off a positive session Monday, which kicked off the start of a new month, quarter and half-year for traders. Markets closed early on Monday and were completely dark on Tuesday for the Fourth of July holiday.

Those gains built on a strong start to the year. Last week, the Nasdaq closed out its best first half of the year since 1983, while the S&P 500 notched its best first-half advance since 2019, as a surge in interest in artificial intelligence buoyed investor optimism in stocks. The Dow was the laggard, rising just 3.8%.

— CNBC’s Jeff Cox contributed reporting