© Reuters
By Liz Moyer
Investing.com -- U.S. stocks gave up early gains as investors tried to turn positive a day before the decision after the Federal Reserve’s closely watched June policy meeting.
At 10:28 AM ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 31 points or 0.1%, while the S&P 500 was down 0.1% and the NASDAQ Composite was down 0.1%. All three indexes had opened higher.
Amid Monday’s market rout, analysts started to speculate whether the Fed would take a more aggressive three-quarter-percentage point increase in its benchmark rate in response to red-hot inflation. The Fed's two-day meeting begins today and concludes with their decision tomorrow.
The S&P entered bear market territory, closing 21% below the record it set in January. That’s the first time the large-cap index entered a bear market since March 2020 at the start of the pandemic in the U.S. The tech sector is already there, with the Nasdaq down 33% since its recent peak.
Already investors are worried about the prospect of a recession – and whether the Fed would move so aggressively it would tip the economy into a downturn. On Tuesday, the crypto exchange operator Coinbase Global Inc (NASDAQ:COIN) said it was laying off 18% of its workers in preparation for a recession. Its shares fell 5%.
Producer prices for May gave an initial bounce to stocks. Overall, the index rose 0.8% from April and core PPI, which removes volatile energy and food prices, rose 0.5%. The expectation was for core prices to rise 0.6%. March's increases were revised down to 0.4% from 0.5% for the overall index and to 0.2% from 0.4% for the core index.
Oracle Corporation (NYSE:ORCL) shares rose 7.8% after the cloud software provider reported better than expected revenue and profit and projected 30% growth for its cloud business in its 2023 fiscal year.
Continental Resources Inc (NYSE:CLR) shares jumped 14.3% after its Chairman Harold Hamm and his family offered $70 a share for the stock they don’t already own. Hamm already has about 83% ownership. The offer for the shale producer is valued at roughly $25 billion.
Oil rose. WTI was up 2%, to $123.45 a barrel, while Brent crude rose 2% to $125 a barrel. Gold fell 0.8%, to $1817 an ounce.
