Check back for updates throughout the trading day

U.S. equity futures were little changed in early Wednesday trading, while the dollar added to recent gains against its global peers, as investors braced for what could be a crucial Federal Reserve interest rate decision later in the session.

Stocks returned to their winning ways again Tuesday, with the S&P 500 rising nearly 30 points on the session and the Nasdaq recording modest gains, as the market’s larger tech stocks paced the overall advance following AI-chip maker Nvidia’s  (NVDA)  flagship developers’ conference.

Investors’ focus in today’s session, however, is likely to fall firmly on both the Fed rate decision, expected at 2:30 pm Eastern Time, as well as Chairman Jerome Powell’s remarks to the media 30 minutes later.

With no change expected to the central bank’s benchmark lending rate, which currently sits between 5.25% and 5.5%, the highlight of today’s release is likely to be the publication of the Fed’s new Summary of Economic Projections, better-known as the dot plots.

The dot plots will lay out, in visual terms, where Fed officials see the median federal-funds rate over the coming three years, which by proxy provides a guide to how many rate cuts it may need to deliver.

December’s dots pointed to three rate cuts in 2024, but markets are now starting to bet that officials may trim that figure to two amid the surprise uptick in inflation over the first two months of the year and the continued resilience in the labor market.

Powell “will try to sound tough on inflation,” while members of the policy-making Federal Open Market Committee “will focus on when cuts might occur,” said Bryce Doty, senior portfolio manager with Sit Investment Associates.

“With inflation hovering just above the Fed’s 2% target, some investors are fearing the worst on rate cuts,” he added. “But as long as the door is open to cuts this year, bonds (and likely stocks) will rally (and) Fed members will be left scratching their heads wondering why their tough talk on inflation led to lower yields!”

Benchmark 10-year-note yields were marked 2 basis points lower from last night’s levels at 4.279% heading into the start of the trading day. Two-year notes were pegged at 4.675%.

The U.S. dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of its global currency peers, was marked 0.5% higher at 104.110. Much of the upward move was tied to weakness in the Japanese yen, which slumped to 151.69 in a holiday-thinned market in Tokyo.

On Wall Street, futures tied to the S&P 500 indicate an opening-bell decline of around 3 points, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average called 25 points lower

The tech-focused Nasdaq, meanwhile, is looking at a 45 point gain thanks in part to premarket advances for Intel  (INTC) , which was awarded $20 billion in loans and grants by the U.S. government to build a domestic chipmaking facility, and Tesla  (TSLA) . 

In overseas markets, stocks in Europe were little changed heading into the early hours of Frankfurt trading, with the regionwide Stoxx 600 slipping 0.14% as investors eyed today’s Fed rate decision.

Overnight in Asia, markets in Tokyo were closed for Japan’s annual celebration of the Vernal Equinox, while the regionwide MSCI ex-Japan benchmark slipped 0.56% into the close of trading.

Related: Veteran fund manager picks favorite stocks for 2024