Investing.com - Wall Street futures pointed to a mostly flat open for the major U.S. indexes on Wednesday one day after the Dow Jones Industrial Average ended at another record high.
The Dow futures rose 16 points or 0.08%; S&P 500 futures edged up 1.2 points or 0.07%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 futures added 1.2 points or 0.03%.
On Tuesday, the S&P 500 closed up 0.34%, 0.1% below the record close on November 25. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.18% and finished at an all-time high for a second straight session and the Nasdaq Composite added 0.45%.
The Dow has rallied since the November 8 U.S. presidential election, largely driven by gains in bank and industrial stocks, which are expected to benefit from higher spending on infrastructure and reduced regulations under the Trump administration.
Financial stocks remained in focus, with shares in Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC), Bank of America (NYSE:BAC), Citigroup (NYSE:C) and Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) higher.
JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) was fined a total of $520 million by the European Commission’s antitrust regulator on Wednesday for its part in a cartel to rig the Libor rate, used to reflect the cost of interbank lending.
Elsewhere, pharmaceutical giant Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) was handed a record $106.3 million fine by the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority for driving up the cost of an epilepsy drug by as much as 2,600%.
Brown Forman (NYSE:BFb), the makers of Jack Daniel’s whiskey was due to report earnings ahead of the opening bell on Wednesday.
In currency markets, the dollar was holding steady against a basket of six other major currencies, with the U.S. dollar index at 100.52.
In commodity markets, oil prices were slightly higher but concerns over hurdles facing a planned output cut by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries checked gains.
Investors were turning their attention towards a meeting of OPEC and non-OPEC members in Vienna on December 10 to finalize the details of last week’s output cut agreement.
The U.S. was not scheduled to release any major economic reports and there were no Federal Reserve speakers on the docket after the central bank entered its ‘blackout’ period on Tuesday ahead of next week’s monetary policy meeting.
According to Investing.com's Fed Rate Monitor Tool, 97.8% of traders expect the Fed to raise interest rates at the meeting.