US markets today: NASDAQ 100, Dow Jones and S&P 500 trade on the flat line ahead of Fed decision; SK Hynix soars 10%

The US stock markets extended their gains on Wednesday amid optimism around tech stocks. However, gains were limited to 0.1% across the board. The Dow Jones rose 48 points, the NASDAQ 100 jumped 50 points, and the S&P 500 traded largely flat to positive on Wednesday’s opening session.

Besides this, investors are keenly focusing on the Federal Reserve’s policy outcome later today. The central bank is expected to keep the rates unchanged at the current rate of 3.75% to 4.00%. The CME FedWatch tool predicts more than a 90% chance of status quo in today's monetary policy decision. However, there is still a ~10% chance of a rate hike to 4%-4.25%.

The monetary policy decision comes at a time when the September CPI inflation surged to 3.7%, breaking the two-month streak of unchanged price rise at 3.4%. Meanwhile, the larger economic activity remains strong, with the manufacturing and composite PMI holding multi-year high levels.

Shares of SK Hynix were among the top gainers on the NASDAQ index after the South Korean chip-maker produced stellar results for the quarter. SK Hynix reported a nearly sevenfold rise in net profit and a threefold rise in revenue for the quarter ended in September.

Besides this, Anthropic IPO is also continues to steer the broader sentiment around the tech stocks ahead of its record-breaking public issue. The company’s revenue for the H12026 surged over 1,386% as compared to last year. The company will amongst the first AI companies with generative AI and foundational model building company to list on the exchanges.

The stellar performance by the Korean chipmaker bolstered hopes for chipmakers in the US. The semiconductor index SOX surged 0.7% on Wednesday, extending the rally for the third consecutive session.

Carried by the optimism around SK Hynix’s earnings, shares of US-based chipmakers like Micron Technology (+5.2%), SanDisk Corporation (+4.8%) and AMD (+0.4%) were among the top gainers.

On the flip side, the shares of AI-hyperscalers like Microsoft Corporation (-0.52%), Meta Platforms (-0.43%) were among the top losers in the Megacap names.

Besides this, shares of Microsoft and Alphabet are also in focus ahead of their quarterly earnings release after the market hours. Investors will closely monitor the commentary on additional investment in the AI-infrastructure and building cloud computing capacity.