LIVE MARKETS-Stocks mixed, investors non-committal: Over to you, Jerome

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STOCKS MIXED, INVESTORS NON-COMMITTAL: OVER TO YOU, JEROME

Wall Street had a mixed and range-bound Tuesday as investors seemed commitment-averse ahead of Powell & Co's rate decision on Wednesday.

The S&P 500 joined the Dow in negative territory, while the Nasdaq eked out a nominal gain. The small-cap Russell 2000 .RUT also ended green, notching its third consecutive advance.

Airlines were the day's clear outperformers, with all nine constituents in the S&P 1500 Airlines index .SPCOMAIR handily outperforming the broader market.

Down at the other end of the scale, housing .HGX and homebuilders .SPCOMHOME, along with banks .SPXBK, all had bad days.

The U.S. Federal Reserve is widely expected to lower the Fed funds target rate for the third and final time this year when it wraps up is December policy meeting on Wednesday, with CME's FedWatch assigning an 87.4% probability to that outcome.

What remains unknown is the Fed Chair Jerome Powell's tone and the contents of the central bank's Summary of Economic Projections, which will contain an update to the dot plot, the potential road map of future Fed policy.

The Fed is divided on which half of its dual mandate warrants the most attention; price control or full employment. To make matters worse, huge gaps remain in the economic picture; with official inflation and employment data missing in action amid Washington's shutdown spat, policymakers have limited information to inform their decision.

Even so, it's clear that inflation remains above the Fed's 2% target and the labor market is softening.

Early in the session the Labor Department released its JOLTS report, which showed a rise in unfilled jobs, a hiring slowdown, an uptick in layoffs and the lowest quit rate since the nadir of the COVID era.

So private sources (ADP, Challenger, ISM, NFIB, Conference Board) are likely to play a larger role than normal in the decision-making process.

Speaking of data, mortgage demand and Q3 employment costs are on Wednesday's docket, as are quarterly results from Adobe ADBE.O and Oracle ORCL.O among a smattering of others.

Here's your closing snapshot:

(Stephen Culp)

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