Fed officials bought time in June to assess if more hikes needed: Minutes

Fed minutes news: The Federal Open Market Committee — the US central bank's rate-deciding panel — decided unanimously to hold benchmark interest rates at the June review in order to buy time and assess if more of aggressive hikes are needed in its battle against red-hot inflation, minutes of the meeting released on Wednesday showed.

Investors still largely expect the Federal Reserve to increase rates at its next meeting later this month. While almost all officials deemed it “appropriate or acceptable” to keep rates unchanged in a 5-5.25 per cent target range, some would have supported a 25-basis-point increase instead, according to the minutes of the meeting, held between June 13 and 14. All eyes are on key macroeconomic data due before the meeting, including a monthly report of jobless claims in the world's largest economy.

Also read -- Wall Street posts modest loss after Fed minutes

The three main Wall Street indices — the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite — finished with losses to the tune of 0.2-0.4 per cent, as investors attemtped to digest the FOMC minutes, opening up to the prospect of further hikes in rates in the days to come. The Dow Jones declined 129.8 points to end at 34,288.6, the S&P 500 lost 8.8 points to 4,446.8 and the tech stocks-heavy Nasdaq Composite slipped 25.1 points to 13,791.7.

With agency inputs

(This story will be updated shortly)

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