Futures across U.S. indexes fluctuated on Wednesday as investors anxiously await the Federal Reserve’s Economic Symposium at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, on Friday. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell is expected to shed light on the U.S. central bank’s approach to tackling the United States’ ongoing economic challenges.
While the 10-year Treasury yield remained above 3% and the dollar remained steady, futures on both the Nasdaq 100 and the benchmark S&P 500 experienced a mixture of gains and losses.
Much speculation has built up surrounding the weakening economic conditions across Europe and Asia as well as the US. Although an interest rate hike aimed at combatting inflation could spark a recession, Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari is adamant that the central bank must spring into action in order to bring inflation under control.
Kelvin Tay, Asia-Pacific chief investment officer at UBS Global Wealth Management agreed with Kashkari’s sentiment, observing on Bloomberg Television that the Federal Reserve “is probably going to use this weekend to reiterate the fact that rates have more room to climb because they really want to bring inflation down.”
The Stoxx Europe 600 index experienced marginal losses, while European natural gas prices continued to increase amid plant outages in the U.S. and Norway, thus adding to the Russian supply drought.