By Chibuike Oguh
NEW YORK (Reuters) – World stocks edged lower in choppy trading while the U.S. Treasury yields fell across the board on Wednesday after the Federal Reserve delivered a much-expected interest rate cut and signaled the start of a monetary policy easing cycle.
The Fed cut rates by a quarter of a percentage point and indicated it will steadily lower borrowing costs for the rest of this year. Only new Governor Stephen Miran, who joined the Fed on Tuesday and is on leave as head of the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, dissented in favor of a half-percentage-point cut.
Benchmark S&P 500 and the Nasdaq were trading slightly lower while the Dow rose after the Fed’s announcement. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.56% to 46,014.88, the S&P 500 fell 0.31% to 6,585.98 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 0.75% to 22,162.03.
MSCI’s gauge of stocks across the globe slid 0.14% to 975.41, retreating from its record highs.
The benchmark U.S. 10-year note yield fell 1.5 basis points to 4.009%. The 2-year note yield, which typically moves in step with interest rate expectations for the Fed, fell 1.5 basis points to 3.495%.
(Reporting by Chibuike Oguh in New York and Dhara Ranasinghe in London; additional reporting by Rocky Swift in Tokyo, editing by Jane Merriman, Chizu Nomiyama, Nick Zieminski and Richard Chang)
