Investing.com – Wall Street was higher on Tuesday as investors looked ahead to the interest rate decision from the Federal Reserve and shrugged off trade war concerns.
The S&P 500 was up nine points or 0.36% to 2,722.58 as of 9:46 AM ET (13:46 GMT) while the Dow composite increased 136 points or 0.55% to 24,747.27, and tech heavy NASDAQ Composite rose 31 points or 0.43% to 7,375.99.
Investors are looking ahead to Wednesday, when the Federal Reserve delivers its interest rate decision after the end of a two day meeting that begins on Tuesday. Traders are expecting an interest rate increase of a quarter point as Fed chair Jerome Powell gives his first press conference after the meeting.
Two more rate hikes are expected this year, but investors will closely for any hawkish tones in the “dot plot” projections.
Meanwhile fresh trade war concerns resurfaced after news that U.S. President Donald Trump will unveil $60 billion of tariffs on Chinese imports by Friday.
Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) was among the biggest losers after the morning bell, falling 2.43%. The social media giant fell 6.8% on Monday, amid news that political research firm Cambridge Analytica collected data on 50 million Facebook users without their knowledge. It was the worst decline in three years.
Meanwhile Oracle (NYSE:ORCL) decreased 9.12% after mixed earnings results and Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR)was down 1.74%.
Elsewhere BlackBerry Ltd (NYSE:BB) surged 4.36% after it announced it was providing the security for Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) Office phone apps and FedEx (NYSE:FDX) gained 1.05% after Walmart (NYSE:WMT) said it would open the shipping company in 500 of its U.S. stores.
In Europe stocks were mostly up. In Germany the DAX rose 51 points or 0.43% while France’s CAC 40 increased 15 points or 0.30% and in London the FTSE 100 was up 30 points or 0.43%. Meanwhile Spain’s IBEX 35 slipped eight points or 0.08% and the pan-European Euro Stoxx 50 inched up 10 points or 0.30%.
In commodities, gold futures fell 0.55% to $1,310.50 a troy ounce while crude oil futures surged 1.82% to $63.26 a barrel. The U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of six major currencies, rallied 0.41% to 89.84.