S&P 500 futures are little changed as oil ticks higher, traders await Fed rate decision: Live updates – USA News 18 June 2026

Date: June 18, 2026  |  Source: CNBC  |  Category: USA News

Overview

Wednesday’s FOMC decision marks the first with new Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh at the helm of the U.S. central bank.

Key Details

Livestream

Stocks fell on Wednesday, while Treasury yields surged, as investors grew uncertain over the path of monetary policy after several Federal Reserve officials indicated there could be a rate hike this year to tamp down on inflation.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 507.12 points, or 0.98%, after earlier hitting a fresh all-time intraday record — the index's third consecutive high. The 30-stock index closed at 51,492.55. The S&P 500 lost 1.21% and ended at 7,420.10. The Nasdaq Composite shed 1.34% and settled at 26,021.66.

Major tech bellwethers led the losses, with Microsoft, Meta Platforms, Alphabet and Amazon all closing in the red. Hot IPO SpaceX hurt sentiment as well, falling for the first time since going public on Friday.Gains in chip stocks like Intel and Micron Technology helped stem the overall market's losses.

At the conclusion of the Fed's two-day meeting, the first under new Chairman Kevin Warsh, the central bank left interest rates unchanged at a target range of 3.5% to 3.75%.

A number of Fed officials see rates increasing in 2026, according to the summary of economic projections. The fed funds rate's median estimate for year-end now stands at 3.8%. That's an increase from 3.4% in the prior projections from March, which suggests that the committee sees at least one rate hike as necessary in 2026.

Warsh revealed he abstained from submitting a projection, complicating the forecast.

Treasury yields jumped following the decision, with the 2-year yield gaining more than 16 basis points to 4.216%.

"The market reaction at this point is largely to the dot plot … being much more hawkish," said Claudia Sahm, chief economist at New Century Advisors. "The wind has changed a lot in terms of the inflation picture."

Traders also focused on the way Warsh several times during the press conference emphasized the Fed's commitment to "price stability," a signal that he might not follow through with a push to lower rates like many expected as President Donald Trump's nominee.

"He is absolutely telling you that he plans on delivering on price stability. So that means … we're not going to have such easy money policy as everybody thought maybe Chairman Warsh would do back in the first quarter of this year, when everyone was counting on rate cuts," DoubleLine Capital CEO Jeffrey Gundlach said on CNBC's "Closing Bell."  "He doesn't sound like that today at all."

— CNBC's Yun Li contributed reporting.

The three major averages declined on Wednesday after Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh gave his first press conference in the role.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 507.12 points, or 0.98%, to end at 51,492.55. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite dropped 1.21% and 1.34% to settle at 7,420.10 and 26,021.66.

— Sean Conlon

Wells Fargo analysts are not impressed by SNAP's new product Specs, the augmented reality glasses priced at $2,195 with four-hour battery life.

The analysts said the product was "disappointing given the length of the dev cycle." The product is favorably priced  compared to the HoloLens 2 and Vision Pro, both surpassing $3,000. It also compares favorably to META Orion. Still, the analysts are "not anticipating SPECS to materialize as a meaningful near-term financial driver." 

"We believe 100k units is a 'stretch goal' for the first generation of SPECS, implying $220M of revenue. Assuming 3yrs b/w generations, that further implies $75M of revs / year, or 1% accretion vs. SNAP 2026 consensus revenue; user base likely too small to monetize meaningfully in ads or subscriptions over the near term. While NT revenue pot'l limited, we do believe SPECS will be gross margin positive," they wrote. 

The analysts see Spec's value to focus on "real-world utility" such as cooking or training for sports. 

— Ananya Chetia

The Federal Reserve signaling an interest rate hike is in the cards falls in line with expectations in the fixed income market, according to Potomac Fund Management's Shawn Snyder.

"A victory for those that believe the bond market is smarter than the stock market," the firm's economic strategist said. "Today's message from the dot-plot is that most Fed officials are now aligned with the bond market, which has been predicting at least one rate hike for months now."

Snyder added that Warsh's vow to "deliver price stability" should ease investors' concerns surrounding the central bank's independence.

— Sean Conlon

The major averages cut their losses as Chairman Warsh detailed upcoming changes to the Fed, including the rollout of five task forces that will address the central bank's communications, its balance sheet and other issues.

The S&P 500 was last down 0.2% at 2:51 p.m. ET, while the Nasdaq Composite and Dow Industrials were little changed on the session. At their session lows, the S&P 500 was down about 0.88%, while the Dow was off 0.41%, or about 214 points. At its nadir, the Nasdaq was down 0.98%.

— Darla Mercado

The Fed kept interest rates unchanged, as expected, as the central bank concluded its first meeting with Kevin Warsh as chief.

"Economic activity is expanding at a solid pace despite elevated uncertainty that owes, in part, to the conflict in the Middle East. Productivity growth and capital investment are strong," the statement read. "Job gains have kept pace with the workforce, and the unemployment rate has changed little."

— Fred Imbert

Tesla shares are down 10% on the year, but the popular retail stock isn't being cannibalized too badly by last week's SpaceX IPO, analysts with Wolfe Research wrote in a Wednesday note to clients.

Markets are increasingly assuming that a merger of SpaceX and Tesla, both of which are run by Elon Musk, is in the works, though not until next year at the earliest, they said. 

"TSLA stock has continued to hold up well even as investors gravitate towards SPCX, with the market assuming increasing likelihood of an eventual TSLA/SPCX merger," Emmanuel Rosner and colleagues at Wolfe wrote.

For Tesla stock to gain momentum, investors want to see "tangible progress in Tesla's AI efforts," particularly in taxis and robots, Rosner said.

"Notably on robotaxi, TSLA's rollout remains much slower than expected, with their unsupervised fleet in Austin stalling out and the company on-track to miss their target of 7 additional markets," he wrote.

— Tobias Burns

Morgan Stanley moved Credicorp's stock to overweight from equal weight, noting that a potential political transition in Peru could give shares a boost.

Analyst Jorge Kuri adjusted the price target to $480 from $375, implying upside of 31.7% from Tuesday's close.

Kuri predicts that Keiko Fujimori and her political party, Fuerza Popular, will take office. Fuerza Popular is expected to provide macro stability, support for private investment, and improve governance, the analyst said. He expects these changes will create stronger credit demand.

"We think this should translate into much-needed corporate and consumer confidence, and therefore stronger credit demand. We do not think this inflection is priced into BAP shares," Kuri said in his note.

Credicorp has been on a strong run for the past year, rising 79%, and growing 36% this year.

— Assiatou Hann

Chairman Kevin Warsh won't deliver concrete policy change at this week's Fed meeting, but there will be important clues about how the next few years will go, according to Wolfe Research.

"With no realistic prospect for Warsh to engineer a sharp dovish policy shift, we expect he'll try to deliver on his broader promise of 'regime change' in other areas," Tobin Marcus, head of Wolfe's U.S. policy and politics US Policy and Politics, said in a note Wednesday.

Among the steps he expects Warsh to take today are the removing of the easing bias in the FOMC's statement and declining to submit a dot for the "dot plot," which charts where individual officials expect interest rates to head in the future.

Marcus also doesn't expect any formal action on inflation measures or model updates, although Warsh has previously indicated he may explore a shift in what the Fed uses for targets.

— Michelle Fox

Shares of JPMorgan Chase rose more than 1% to a new all-time intraday high on Wednesday.

This is the first time the stock has reached a new all-time high since Jan. 5. Since the start of the year, the stock has only risen more than 4%.

JPM, year-to-date— Sean Conlon

SpaceX shares sank on Wednesday, putting a damper on momentum after a red-hot first few days of trading.

SPCX, 1-day— Kai Nicol-Schwarz

Sales under contract for homes accelerated a much stronger-than-expected pace in May, despite stubbornly high interest rates, the National Association of Realtors reported Wednesday.

Pending home sales surged 3.8% for the month, helped by particularly strong numbers in the Northeast and Midwest, the NAR said. The increase was well ahead of the Dow Jones consensus for a 1% gain

The monthly gains helped boost sales 4.8% on a year-over-year comparison, "an indication of pent-up housing demand and consumers' acceptance of above-6% mortgage rates as the new normal," said NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun.

— Jeff Cox

Consumer spending rose more than expected in May, boosted by surging gasoline prices though also rising across most sectors, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday.

Retail sales rose 0.9% for the month, according to numbers adjusted for seasonality but not inflation. The increase more than doubled the 0.4% gain in April and topped the Dow Jones consensus for 0.5%. Excluding autos, sales still gained 0.8%, well above the 0.4% forecast.

Gas station receipts jumped 3.4% amid soaring energy prices tied to the Iran war. However, gains were spread in other areas including miscellaneous retail (2.3%), online stores (1.5%), motor vehicles parts and dealers (1.2%) and furniture the home furnishings (1%). The only major category to post a decline was electronics and appliances, which saw a 0.5% decrease.

In addition to topping the forecast, the sales increase was faster than the inflation increase of 0.5% as measured by the consumer price index.

— Jeff Cox

The S&P 500 began Wednesday's session little changed.

The broad-based index climbed 0.1% just after the opening bell, while the Nasdaq Composite gained 0.5%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average traded up 37 points, or 0.1%.

— Sean Conlon

SpaceX shares rose more than 3% in premarket trading on Wednesday, building on its strong gains since its blockbuster IPO last week.

SpaceX's jump this week sent its market cap above Amazon on Tuesday, when it also briefly surpassed Microsoft to become the fourth-largest company in the U.S. by valuation at that time.

SPCX, 1-day— Kai Nicol-Schwarz and Sean Conlon

Micron Technology has considerable room left to run as the company positions itself to benefit from a memory shortage amid the artificial intelligence boom, according to Deutsche Bank.  

The bank has a buy on the semiconductor name. It hiked its price target to $1,500 from $1,000, implying 47% upside from Tuesday's close. 

"We see strong upward bias to our estimates given management's intra-quarter commentary around its financial outlook strengthening, continuous strength in memory pricing, and the company's historical tendency to beat Street revenue estimates," analyst Melissa Weathers said Tuesday in a note to clients.

Shares of Micron have surged 258% in the year to date, fueled by a memory supply crunch worsened by widening AI adoption. It's a trend that should continue for the next few years, boosting the semiconductor firm's stock, according to Deutsche Bank.

— Liz Napolitano

U.K. government bonds — known as Gilts — rallied on Wednesday after a cooler-than-expected inflation print.

Yields on 10-year Gilts, the main benchmark for British government borrowing, were last seen more than 4 basis points lower at 4.7467% shortly after 1:00 p.m. in London (8:00 a.m. E.T.).

The shorter-dated 2-year Gilt yield also fell more than 4 basis points to 4.1411%. The 30-year Gilt yield was last seen almost 3 basis points lower at 5.4663%.

U.K. inflation remained unchanged at 2.8% in May, official figures showed on Wednesday, coming in lower than the 3% forecast by economists in a Reuters poll.

The numbers come ahead of the Bank of England's latest monetary policy decision on Thursday, which is expected to see interest rates held at their current level of 3.75%.

— Hugh Leask

Check out the companies making the biggest moves premarket:

Read the full list here.

— Davis Giangiulio

Trump said Wednesday a deal was not yet final, noting the U.S. will "go right back to dropping bombs" if he doesn't like the agreement.

"It's not final, it's a memorandum of understanding, and if I don't like it, we'll go back to shooting at them, dropping bombs on their heads. I don't like it if they don't behave. We'll go right back to dropping bombs right smack in the middle of their head," Trump said at the G7 conference.

Crude priced bounced to trade slightly higher following that comment. WTI and Brent futures were up 0.4% and 0.3%, respectively.

— Fred Imbert

Chip stocks rose in early trading, giving Nasdaq-100 futures a boost.

The Invesco PHLX Semiconductor ETF (SOXQ) traded 2.4% higher. ASML and Intel gained 4% each to lead the advance. Micron, Lam Research and Marvell Technology also rose at least 3% each.

SOXQ rises— Fred Imbert

Asia markets closed mostly higher Wednesday, with Japan's Nikkei 225 reaching a record high.

Nikkei 225 closed 0.72% higher to end the trading day at 69,902.25. South Korea's Kospi advanced 1.58% to 8,864.24.

Hong Kong Hang Seng Index slipped 0.78% as of its last hour of trade, while mainland China's CSI 300 was up 0.97% to 4,931.39. Australia's benchmark S&P/ASX 200 gained 0.54% to 8,966.3.

— Justina Lee

European markets were in mixed territory shortly after the market open on Wednesday, with losses led by the auto sector after a profit warning issued by Germany's BMW.

The pan-European Stoxx 600 was hovering just after 8:10 a.m. in London (3:10 a.m. E.T.).

Regional sectors and major bourses were mixed. The Italian FTSE MIB advanced 0.2% in early trade, while the U.K.'s FTSE 100 was almost 0.1% higher. In Paris, the CAC 40 was about 0.1% lower.  Germany's DAX dropped 0.38%.

Shares in BMW tumbled 7.5% in early dealmaking after the German auto manufacturer issued a profit warning on the back of a downturn in Chinese demand and the ongoing impact of the Middle East war. European autos and parts stocks fell 2.8%.

— Hugh Leask

HSBC's shares in Hong Kong gained nearly 2% Wednesday after the lender reportedly announced a multi-year partnership with Google Cloud to build its artificial intelligence capabilities.

The British lender announced the appointment of its first chief AI officer earlier this year. "AI is going to play an ever-increasing role in HSBC's future plans," said David Rice, HSBC's chief AI officer in a statement following his appointment.

Financial institutions are ramping up efforts in AI capabilities as they seek to boost efficiency and profits, as AI use becomes more ubiquitous in the banking industry.

The market share that global AI will have in the banking sector is expected to reach $143.56 billion by 2030 from $19.87 billion in 2023, according to a report by Grand View Research.

— Justina Lee

Japan's exports in May grew at their fastest pace since November 2022, rising 17% year on year, beating expectations, driven by robust demand for cars and semiconductors.

Growth was higher than the 16.2% expected by economists polled by Reuters, and up from the 14.8% in April.

The country's exports of semiconductors surged 61.2% in May from a year earlier in terms of value, powered by booming demand for artificial intelligence technology, while shipments of cars jumped 16.4%, according to the official data.

The economic data comes after the Bank of Japan raised its policy rate on Tuesday by 25 basis points to the highest in over 30 years at 1%, as the country sees rising inflation and the yen stays weak.

— Lim Hui Jie and Anniek Bao

Asia-Pacific markets opened broadly lower early Wednesday, with South Korea's Kospi leading losses.

The Kospi dropped 1.02% at the open, while the small-cap Kosdaq was marginally lower. Japan's Nikkei 225 slipped 0.20%, while the Topix rose 0.46%.

Australia's benchmark S&P/ASX 200 was 0.17% lower.

Hong Kong Hang Seng index futures were last at 24,510, higher than the index's prior close of 24,493.95.

— Justina Lee

Asia-Pacific markets were set to open mixed on Wednesday amid easing tensions in the Middle East, while traders await the U.S. central bank's interest rate decision.

Japan's Nikkei 225 was poised to decline after hitting a record intra-day high Tuesday, with the Chicago futures contract at 69,160 and its Osaka counterpart last traded at 69,110, compared with the index's previous close of 69,404.50.

Hong Kong Hang Seng index futures were last at 24,510, higher than the index's last close of 24,493.95.

Futures for Australia's S&P/ASX 200′s traded at 8,894, while the index closed at 8,917.70.

U.S. President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he will be open to sharing details of a new U.S.-Iran peace deal with Congress, after some key Congress members called for an opportunity to review the deal before it is finalized.

The preliminary deal between the U.S. and Iran will extend the ceasefire between the two for 60 days and create a framework for future negotiations over Iran's nuclear program and other issues. 

— Justina Lee

On Tuesday, seven of the 11 GICS sectors ended the session higher.

The financials sector was the day's outperformer, rising 1.49%. It was followed by utilities and industrials stocks, which respectively climbed 0.69% and 0.67%.

On the other hand, information technology stocks were the session's laggard, with the sector dropping 2.32%. Energy and consumer discretionary stocks respectively lost 0.25% and 0.11%, while the health care sector ending marginally lower, slipping 0.02%.

— Lisa Kailai Han

These are some of the companies reporting earnings for the rest of the week:

— Lisa Kailai Han

Stock futures opened near flat on Tuesday night.

Shortly after 6 p.m. ET, futures tied to all three major indexes were trading little changed.

— Lisa Kailai Han

Why This Matters for Exam Students

This USA news is important for students preparing for competitive exams including UPSC, SSC CGL, SSC CHSL, Railway RRB NTPC, IBPS PO, SBI PO and all state PSC examinations. Current affairs and general awareness are key sections in all these exams.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

When was this news published?

June 18, 2026

What is this news about?

Wednesday’s FOMC decision marks the first with new Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh at the helm of the U.S. central bank.

Which exams cover this topic?

UPSC, SSC CGL, SSC CHSL, Railway RRB, IBPS, SBI PO, and all State PSC exams.

Who reported this news?

CNBC

Conclusion

Stay updated with the latest USA current affairs on Government Naukri Alert. Bookmark this page and visit daily for fresh exam-relevant news and government job updates.

Source: CNBC

---

📌 Also Read:
→ Latest Government Jobs 2026
→ Gujarat Government Jobs 2026