Investing.com – Wall Street was mixed on Tuesday as the Federal Open Market Committee meeting kicked off in Washington.
The S&P 500 inched forward two and a half points or 0.10% as of 10:07 AM ET (15:07 GMT) while the Dow composite was up 80 points or 0.33% and the tech heavy NASDAQ Composite was flat.
The FOMC begins its monetary policy meeting, which wraps up on Wednesday. The central bank is expected to raise interest rates. Investors will be listening closely for any indication of potential rate hikes in 2018. Some worry that recent sluggish economic data could cause a delay of further hikes.
Tech stocks were mostly down in early morning trading. Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) slipped 0.33% while Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) fell 0.21% and Snap was down 1.71%. IP firm Marathon Patent Group Inc (NASDAQ:MARA) decreased 9.70% after announcing it was selling one million of its common stock shares.
Meanwhile airline maker Boeing (NYSE:BA) surged 2.71% after increasing its divided by 20% while luxury car maker Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) rose 2.45% and payments processor Square (NYSE:SQ) was up 2.77%. General Electric (NYSE:GE) inched forward 1.08% while PayPal Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:PYPL) gained 1.32%.
Stocks in Europe were mostly up. In Germany the DAX rallied 22 points or 0.17% while France’s CAC 40 increased 25 points or 0.58% and in London the FTSE 100 surged 37 points or 0.37%. Meanwhile Spain’s IBEX 35 fell 34 points or 0.34% and the pan-European Euro Stoxx 50 gained nine points or 0.28%.
In commodities, gold futures fell 0.37% to $1,242.30 a troy ounce while crude oil futures slipped 0.33% to 57.80 a barrel. The U.S dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of six major currencies, rallied 0.15% to 94.08.