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US stocks finished lower on Wednesday after the release of the minutes of September FOMC policy meeting, wherein policy makers noted that inflation remained “unacceptably high.”
The S&P 500 SPX, -0.33% closed 11.81 points, or 0.3%, lower at 3,577.03. The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -0.10% finished off 28.34 points, or 0.1%, at 29,210.85. The Nasdaq Composite, -0.09% closed 9.09 points, or 0.1%, lower at 10,417.10.
All three major indexes finished lower for a sixth straight day, but on Wednesday, stocks encountered a choppy session slightly lower after minutes from the last Federal Reserve meeting showed policymakers agreed they needed to maintain a more restrictive policy stance.
The minutes of the September meeting showed many Fed officials stressed the cost of not doing enough to bring down inflation.
Fed officials raised interest rates by three-quarters of a percentage point for the third straight time in an effort to drive inflation down from 40-year highs.
Data earlier in the day showed a surprise rise in September producer prices. The Labor Department’s producer prices index rose 8.5% in the 12 months through September, slightly higher than an estimated 8.4% rise. Still, the reading was lower than an 8.7% increase in August.
According to preliminary data, the S&P 500 lost 11.70 points, or 0.33%, to end at 3,577.14 points, while the Nasdaq Composite lost 8.26 points, or 0.08%, to 10,417.93. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 24.23 points, or 0.08%, to 29,214.96.
There have been increasing fears among investors that aggressive rate hikes by the Fed could tip the world’s largest economy into a recession.
The Consumer Price Index data is awaited on Thursday as key data for investors, along with the start of third-quarter earnings, which kick off with results from big banks on Friday.
