U.S. stocks on Wednesday ended a session dominated by the Federal Reserve’s meeting on interest rates and a drop in oil prices, with only technology shares holding strong gains ahead of results from BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion Ltd. and from Oracle Corp.
“My sense is the Fed wasn’t hawkish enough. Officials talked quite a bit about elevated inflation. But they didn’t appear to shift fully to a tightening bias,” said Mike Larson, a Weiss Research analyst.
After a solid advance powered by a slide in crude prices, the major stock indexes wavered after the Fed said it left interest rates unchanged at 2%, and sharpened its focus on inflation in the statement accompanying the decision, as was widely expected by the market.
But a lack of clear signals that the Fed would hike rates later this year pressured the dollar, which led to oil paring earlier losses and dragged down stocks from previous highs.
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