Stocks fell lower Wednesday as Wall Street resumed a holiday-shortened week ahead of June's highly-anticipated jobs report due on on Friday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell nearly 130 points, while the S&P 500 Index and Nasdaq Composite each slipped about 0.2%.
Here's how the market settled on Wednesday:
S&P 500 Index
Dow Jones Industrial Average
Nasdaq Composite Index
Impacting market moves, the Federal Reserve released the minutes from its latest policy meeting Wednesday afternoon, offering traders more insight on the central bank's decision to pause rate hikes in June.
Policymakers decided that "leaving the target range unchanged at this meeting would allow them more time to assess the economy's progress toward the Committee's goals of maximum employment and price stability," the minutes read.
"The economy was facing headwinds from tighter credit conditions, including higher interest rates, for households and businesses, which would likely weigh on economic activity, hiring, and inflation, although the extent of these effects remained uncertain," the policymakers cited as some of the reasons behind the pause.
Economic data released Wednesday showed factory orders rose 0.3% month-over-month in May, below the 0.6% rise expected by economists and lower than the 0.4% increase from the previous month.
Elsewhere, Goldman Sachs upgraded Netflix
"NFLX [management] has executed its password sharing initiative in excess of our prior assumptions, has regained content creation momentum in a manner that has muted any post-pandemic growth headwinds and overall industry competition has become more muted (especially from traditional media companies) in the past six months," Sheridan wrote in a note late Tuesday.
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said in a note on Wednesday that Microsoft
"With AI, the next step we believe on a sum-of-the-parts valuation that MSFT should join Apple in the exclusive $3 trillion clube by early 2024," Ives wrote.
General Motors
Meta Platforms
Looking ahead, market participants will react to new data for the labor market, inflation and the U.S. trade deficit on Thursday.