NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks are holding relatively steady as Wall Street waits to hear what the Federal Reserve will say on Wednesday about where interest rates are heading. The S&P 500 was flat in early trading Tuesday. The index is coming off just its second loss in the last 11 days. The Dow Jones Industrial Average edged up 95 points, and the Nasdaq composite fell 0.3%. Homebuilder Toll Brothers and auto parts seller AutoZone fell after reporting weaker results for the latest quarter than analysts had expected. European indexes were mixed and Asian markets closed mostly lower.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.
Wall Street leaned toward tiny gains early Tuesday ahead of a two-day meeting of the Federal Reserve, where officials will make a decision on where to take the central bank's benchmark interest rate.
Futures for the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average were up less than 0.1% before the bell. Nasdaq futures where unchanged.
Nvidia rose about 1% after U.S. President Donald Trump said he would allow the company to sell an advanced type of computer chip used in the development of artificial intelligence to “approved customers” in China. The chip, known as the H200, is not Nvidia’s most advanced product.
The move has wide potential ramifications, experts said.
“This would allow China to speed up its buildout of AI infrastructure and increase the likelihood of Chinese AI models matching, or possibly even overtaking, frontier U.S. models,” Julian Evans-Pritchard of Capital Economics said in an analysis.
Trump said the Commerce Department was finalizing details for other chipmakers such as AMD and Intel to sell their technologies abroad.
Home Depot dipped 1.8% after it reaffirmed its guidance for 2025 and issued a tepid preliminary outlook for 2026 ahead of its investor day. The hardware store chain expects its profit per share to fall 6% this fiscal year.
CVS rose 2.7% after it raised most of its projections for the remainder of 2025 and issued strong a forecast for fiscal 2026.
Investors are awaiting a meeting of the Federal Reserve on Wednesday, where the U.S. central bank is expected to cut its benchmark interest rate to help counter a weakening jobs outlook.
Stocks have stabilized somewhat in recent weeks, running to the edge of their records on widespread expectations that the Fed will cut its main interest rate for the third time this year. Lower interest rates can give the economy and prices for investments a boost, though the downside is that they can worsen inflation.
The big question is what kind of hints the Fed will offer about where interest rates will go after Wednesday. Many on Wall Street are bracing for talk aimed at tamping down expectations for more cuts in 2026.
Inflation has stubbornly remained above the Fed’s 2% target, and Fed officials are notably split in their opinions about whether high inflation or the slowing job market is the bigger threat to the economy.
Elsewhere, in Europe at midday, Germany's DAX gained 0.3%, while the CAC 40 in Paris slipped 0.7%. Britain's FTSE 100 was unchanged.
In Asian trading, Tokyo's Nikkei 225 index was the main outlier, gaining 0.1% to 50,655.10.
Chinese markets declined as investors watched for news from the Central Economic Work Conference, an annual planning meeting of the ruling Communist Party's leadership.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng lost 1.3% to 24,434.23, while the Shanghai Composite index shed 0.4% to 3,909.52.
In South Korea, the Kospi lost 0.3% to 4,143.55 and the Taiex in Taiwan fell 0.4%.
India's Sensex declined 0.5%.
The S&P/ASX 200 in Australia gave up 0.5% to 8,585.90 after the Reserve Bank opted to keep its cash rate unchanged at 3.6%.
In energy trading early Tuesday, U.S. benchmark crude oil lost 13 cents to $59.01 per barrel, while Brent crude, the international standard, fell 14 cents to $62.63 per barrel.