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Wall Street Pauses as Fed Meeting Looms: Futures Hold Steady

U.S. stock futures were little changed on Tuesday as investors awaited the start of the Federal Reserve’s final policy meeting of the year. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500, and Nasdaq futures all hovered near flat, reflecting a cautious mood across Wall Street. The Fed is widely expected to keep interest rates unchanged, but traders are focused on Chair Jerome Powell’s comments and the central bank’s updated economic projections. Markets are looking for clues on when rate cuts might begin in 2024, with inflation cooling but still above the Fed’s long-term target. Recent gains in equities have been fueled by optimism that the Fed’s tightening cycle is over, yet uncertainty remains about how quickly monetary policy will shift toward easing. Until then, investors appear content to hold their positions, waiting for clearer signals from the Fed before making bold moves.
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Trump's Triumphant Return: A New Era Begins


Donald Trump will be sworn in as U.S. president on Monday, marking the start of another turbulent four-year term. His inauguration completes a triumphant comeback for a political disruptor who survived two impeachment trials, a felony conviction, two assassination attempts, and an indictment for attempting to overturn his 2020 election loss. The ceremony will take place at noon inside the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol, four years after a mob of Trump supporters breached the symbol of American democracy in an unsuccessful effort to forestall the Republican Trump's 2020 defeat to Democrat Joe Biden.

Trump, the first U.S. president since the 19th century to win a second term after losing the White House, has said he will pardon "on Day One" many of the more than 1,500 people charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack. That promise is among a flurry of executive actions concerning immigration, energy, and tariffs that Trump intends to sign as soon as Monday after taking the oath of office. At a campaign-style rally on Sunday in Washington, Trump vowed to impose harsh immigration restrictions on his first day.

As he did in 2017, Trump enters office as a chaotic and disruptive force, vowing to remake the federal government and expressing deep skepticism about the U.S.-led alliances that have shaped post-World War Two global politics. The former president returns to Washington emboldened after winning the national popular vote over Vice President Kamala Harris by more than 2 million votes thanks to a groundswell of voter frustration over persistent inflation. 

Jeremi Suri, a presidential historian at the University of Texas at Austin, compared the present era to the late 19th century, when Grover Cleveland became the only other president to win non-consecutive terms. "What we're really talking about is a fundamentally different economy, a fundamentally different country in terms of its racial and gender and social makeup, and we are as a country struggling to figure out what that means," he said. "It's an existential moment".

Trump will enjoy Republican majorities in both chambers of Congress that have been almost entirely purged of any intra-party dissenters. His advisers have outlined plans to replace nonpartisan bureaucrats with hand-picked loyalists. Even before taking office, Trump established a rival power center in the weeks after his election victory, meeting world leaders and causing consternation by musing aloud about seizing the Panama Canal, taking control of NATO ally Denmark's territory of Greenland, and imposing tariffs on the biggest U.S. trading partners.

His influence has already been felt in the Israel-Hamas announcement last week of a ceasefire deal. Trump, whose envoy joined the negotiations in Qatar, had warned of "hell to pay" if Hamas did not release its hostages before the inauguration.

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