US equity futures rose, alongside European markets, as traders awaited the Fed's rate decision that will be scrutinized for the policy outlook and "dots" rather than the widely expected pause in hikes. As of 7:45am ET, contracts on the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100 both added about 0.2%, with spoos trading up to 4,500. Treasury yields fell across the board, taking their cue from sliding UK rates after inflation unexpectedly slowed and printed far below expectations (CPI core 6.2%, Exp. 6.8%, CPI MoM 0.3%, Exp. 0.7%). The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index traded near the lows of the day, lifting most Group-of-10 currencies. Brent crude reversed earlier losses after it retreated from $95. Gold was little changed, while Bitcoin declined for the first time in three days.

In premarket trading, major technology and internet stocks were mostly higher. Instacart slipped as much as 5%, one day after surging following one of the year’s biggest US initial public offerings but closing at session lows. Intel shares pared an earlier decline as analysts said that the chipmaker showed some progress in its Innovation conference. However, there was disappointment that the event lacked a new customer announcement for the firm’s 18A semiconductor manufacturing process. Here are some other notable premarket movers:

As previewed overnight, today all eyes will be on the Fed's 2pm decision (and Powell's presser) which is expected to hold for the second time this year following a slowing in inflation, while leaving the door open for another increase as early as November. Wall Street will be focused on whether Fed officials’ forecasts for interest rates, the so-called dot plot, show whether they seem determined to hike again.

“While rates should remain steady, a question mark remains over the longer-term outlook,” said Richard Flynn, UK Managing Director at Charles Schwab. “Now that inflation has peaked, we are likely to see the Fed shift to a more surgical approach. There continues to be a possibility of a hike later this year as central bankers target remaining sticky areas, but one more boost is unlikely to trouble the market.”

Britain’s CPI rose 6.7% from a year earlier in August, the slowest pace in 18 months, and less than the 7% expected by economists. The probability of a quarter-point rate increase by the BOE at its meeting on Thursday — almost guaranteed earlier this week — fell to less than 50%, according to swap pricing. Gilt yields tumbled, and US Treasury yields dipped in sympathy after rates on both the five- and 10-year notes hit the highest levels since 2007 on Tuesday.

In Europe, stocks rose and the pound weakened after British inflation slowed unexpectedly. The Stoxx 600 rose 0.6%, with retail and real estate leading gains. Sterling fell as much as 0.5% against the dollar to its lowest level since May as traders bet that the Bank of England is nearing the end of its hiking cycle. UK bonds soared. Here are Europe's top movers

Earlier in the session, Asian stocks fell for a third day as caution prevailed ahead of the Federal Reserve’s policy decision, with surging oil prices driving inflation and raising the possibility of higher-for-longer interest rates. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index dropped as much as 0.6% on Wednesday, led by health-care and energy shares. Japanese and Australian stocks slipped. Brent held close to $94 per barrel, setting the stage for another interest-rate hike by the Fed this year.

In FX, the Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index is flat ahead of the Fed decision later on Wednesday. the yen touched the psychological level of 148 per dollar, the lowest in more than 10 months. The pound traded as much as 0.5% lower to $1.2334 after UK inflation report; money markets price a 52% chance of a quarter-point hike on Thursday, compared with about 90% yesterday.

In commodities, crude futures decline, with WTI falling 1.4% to trade near $89.90. Spot gold drops 0.1%. Goldman analysts raised their forecast for crude back to triple digits as worldwide demand hits unprecedented levels and OPEC+ supply curbs continue to tighten the market. The Wall Street bank pushed up its 12-month forecast for Brent to $100 a barrel from $93. However, most of the rally “is behind us,” the bank said in a note.

Bitcoin is under modest pressure but resides in particularly narrow parameters and is yet to meaningfully deviate away from the USD 27k handle pre-FOMC.

In rates, treasuries were underpinned by gilts, with futures paring portion of Tuesday’s losses led by belly of the curve. US yields are lower by as much as 3bp in belly of the curve with 5s30s steeper and 2s5s30s fly richer by ~2bp on the day; 10-year yields near 4.34% trail gilts by ~7bp in the sector. UK 2s richer by 14.5bp on the day, lowest yield since July. FOMC expected to keep rates unchanged at the 2pm announcement; the dot-plot update is expected to indicate another hike before year-end in a close call. Gilts outperform in an aggressive bull-steepening move after an unexpected drop in UK inflation opened the door for Bank of England to pause rate hikes in Thursday’s decision. US session includes Fed rate decision at 2pm New York time, released with latest staff projections.

Looking to the day ahead now, and the main highlight will be the Fed’s latest policy decision and Chair Powell’s press conference. Other central bank speakers include the ECB’s Elderson. Data releases include the UK CPI and German PPI for August. Lastly, today’s earnings releases include FedEx.

Market snapshot

Top Overnight News from Bloomberg

A more detailed look at global markets courtesy of Newsquawk

APAC stocks were mostly lower with risk appetite dampened ahead of the incoming deluge of central bank policy announcements including the latest FOMC rate decision and dot plot projections. ASX 200 was dragged lower by the commodity-related sectors including energy after oil prices eased back from YTD highs although losses were cushioned by resilience in consumer stocks. Nikkei 225 gradually weakened after the latest trade data showed Japanese exports and imports remained in contraction territory, albeit not as bad as feared. Hang Seng and Shanghai Comp conformed to the subdued mood after the PBoC unsurprisingly maintained its benchmark 1-year and 5-year Loan Prime Rates at 3.45% and 4.20%, respectively, while Country Garden’s dollar bondholders have been left in the dark regarding a coupon payment which was due on Monday although the developer still has a 30-day grace period.

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European bourses are in the green, Euro Stoxx 50 +0.5%, with the FTSE 100 +0.7% outperforming after sub-forecast inflation data and associated GBP softness. Sectors are primarily firmer, Real Estate and Banking names are outperforming on the UK data while Energy and Basic Resources lag with benchmarks mixed/softer. Stateside, futures are essentially flat across the board ahead of the FOMC, ES +0.1%, NQ +0.1%;

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FX

Fixed Income

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Geopolitics

US Event Calendar

DB's Jim Reid concludes the overnight wrap

The long-term study shows how this has been the worst start to a decade for US Treasuries since our data begins in 1800 and yesterday incrementally added to this as 10yr US yields hit 15-plus year highs, with 2yrs at 16-year highs, just as we approach an important trio of central bank meetings. That starts with the Federal Reserve tonight, before we hear from the Bank of England tomorrow, and then the Bank of Japan on Friday morning. But despite all the recent speculation that central banks are near the end of their tightening cycles, the backdrop this week has been a much more hawkish one. For instance, oil prices hit new 10-month highs intra-day though they were marginally lower on the day by the close. We also had an upside surprise from Canada’s CPI, which added to the sense that rate cuts weren’t coming anytime soon.

Of course, the main focus today will be on the Federal Reserve’s decision tonight, along with Chair Powell’s subsequent press conference. In terms of the actual decision, they’re widely expected to leave rates unchanged, so the bigger focus is likely to be on their latest Summary of Economic Projections, which includes the dot plot for where officials see rates over the years ahead. At the last quarterly release in June, the dot plot pointed to two further rate hikes by year-end, and we got one of them at the most recent meeting in July. Our US economists still expect the Fed to signal one further hike this year, but they think Powell will leave open the question of when that tightening could occur, and will lean heavily on a message of data dependency. And even though they expect the Fed’s forecasts to show softer inflation, they think that stronger growth and lower unemployment should counterbalance that, meaning that the 2024 dot will show one less rate cut in 2024 as well. See their full preview here.

We’ll see where things stand after the Fed’s decision, but a key story for much of yesterday was the continued rise in oil prices. Brent Crude almost reached $96/bl yesterday morning but it retreated to close a touch below Monday’s 10-month high (-0.10% to $94.34/bbl) and this morning is trading at $93.23/bbl as we go to print. So a big correction in the last 15 hours from the peaks.

Elsewhere on the energy front, we saw a sizeable spike in European natural gas prices. One month TTF gas futures were up +9.84% to EUR 37.4/MWh, their highest level in three weeks, amid delays to production at Norwegian gas fields.

In other inflationary news, we had another upside inflation surprise out of Canada, as CPI hit +4.0% in August (vs. +3.8% expected). That led investors to price in a much higher likelihood that the Bank of Canada would hike rates next month, with the likelihood up from 25% on Monday to 51% after the close yesterday. In turn, Canadian sovereign bonds significantly underperformed, with the 10yr yield up +11.4bps yesterday to a new post-2008 high.

Those inflationary developments led investors to price in higher rates for longer. Indeed, the rate priced in for the Fed’s December 2024 meeting hit a new high for the cycle at 4.63%. That means less than three 25bp cuts are now priced in by end-2024. That helped boost yields across the curve, with the 2yr Treasury yield (+3.7bps) closing at a new high for this cycle at 5.09%, and the 10yr yield (+5.6bps) also closed at a new cycle high of 4.36%. It was much the same story in Europe, where yields on 10yr bunds (+3.0bps) and BTPs (+0.7bps) hit a 6-month high, whilst yields on 10yr French OATs (+2.8bps) closed at their highest since 2012. The only exception to this pattern were yields on 10yr gilts (-4.9bps), which fell ahead of this morning’s CPI report for August. That’ll be released shortly after we go to press, and will be the last big data release ahead of the Bank of England’s decision tomorrow. Headline is expected to pick up two tenths to 7% YoY with core down a tenth to 6.8% YoY.

The prospect of higher rates provided a tough backdrop for equities, though the S&P 500 crept back up in the last few hours of trading from being down -0.8% at the early session lows to close 'only' -0.22% lower, albeit to a 3-week low. The moderate decline was a broad-based one, with 8 of 10 S&P 500 sector groups down on the day. The other major US indices saw similar declines, including the Dow Jones (-0.31%) and the NASDAQ (-0.23%), whilst the small-cap Russell 2000 (-0.42%) fell to its lowest level since late-June. In Europe the picture was a bit more positive, but the STOXX 600 still fell -0.04%.

In Asia, the Nikkei (-0.36%), Hang Seng (-0.58%), CSI (-0.31%), Shanghai Composite (-0.34%) and the KOSPI (-0.05%) are all slightly lower alongside S&P 500 (-0.11%) and NASDAQ 100 (-0.16%) futures.

Early morning data showed that Japan’s exports dropped -0.8% y/y in August (v/s -2.1% expected) and against a -0.3% in July, making it the second month of declines (even if better than expected) mainly due to weak exports to China (-11.0% y/y). Meanwhile, imports weakened -17.8% y/y in August less than the expected fall of -20.0% as against a revised decline of -13.6%.

In FX, the Japanese yen pared its initial gains against the dollar to trade at 147.81 (+0.03%) after US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen stated that the US would show understanding over Japan’s intervention to support its currency if the measures are aimed at smoothing out undue volatility. You're unlikely to see anything ahead of the FOMC and BoJ (Friday) but this maybe makes intervention a bit easier going forward. Elsewhere, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) left its 1-yr and 5-yr loan prime rates unchanged at 3.45% and 4.2%, respectively.

When it came to yesterday’s other data, US housing starts fell significantly more than expected in August, with an annualised rate of 1.283m (vs. 1.439m expected). That’s their lowest level since May 2020, when the economy was still affected by the initial wave of Covid-19. However, building permits moved up to an annualised 1.543m (vs. 1.440m expected), which is their highest level since October. Permits tend to be the more reliable data point so the uncertainty around housing continues after Monday's poor NAHB. Separately in the Euro Area, the final August CPI reading was revised down to +5.2%, compared with the initial flash reading at +5.3%.

To the day ahead now, and the main highlight will be the Fed’s latest policy decision and Chair Powell’s press conference. Other central bank speakers include the ECB’s Elderson. Data releases include the UK CPI and German PPI for August. Lastly, today’s earnings releases include FedEx.