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Nasdaq hits a record as Wall Street drifts

NEW YORK — U.S. stock indexes drifted amid mixed trading Monday, ahead of this week’s upcoming meeting by the Federal Reserve that could set Wall Street’s direction into next year.

The S&P 500 rose 0.4%, coming off its first losing week in the last four. The Nasdaq composite climbed 1.2% to a record, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average was a laggard and fell 110 points, or 0.3%.

Broadcom leaped 11.2% to help lead the S&P 500 for a second straight day after delivering a profit report last week that beat analysts’ expectations. The technology company is riding a wave of enthusiasm about its artificial-intelligence offerings in particular.

The market’s main event, though, will arrive on Wednesday when the Federal Reserve will announce its last move on interest rates for the year. The widespread expectation is that it will cut its main rate for a third straight time, as it tries to boost the slowing job market after getting inflation nearly all the way down to its target of 2%.

The question is how much more it will cut rates next year, and Fed officials will release projections for where they see the federal funds rate ending 2025, along with other economic indicators, once their meeting concludes. Fed Chair Jerome Powell will also answer questions in a press conference following the meeting.

For now, the general expectation among traders is that the Fed may cut a couple more times in 2025, according to data from CME Group. But such expectations have been shrinking following reports suggesting inflation may be tougher to get all the way down to 2% from here. Besides last month’s slight acceleration in inflation, another worry is that President-elect Donald Trump’s preferences for tariffs and other policies could lead to higher inflation down the line.

Goldman Sachs economist David Mericle has dropped his earlier forecast of a cut by the Fed in January, for example. Beyond the possibility of tariffs, he said Fed officials may also want to slow their cuts because of uncertainty about exactly how low rates need to go so that they no longer press the brakes on the economy.

Expectations for a series of cuts to rates by the Fed have been one of the main reasons the S&P 500 has set an all-time high 57 times so far this year and is heading for one of its best years of the millennium. The economy has held up better than many feared, continuing to grow even after the Fed hiked the federal funds rate to a two-decade high in hopes of grinding down on inflation, which topped 9% two summers ago.

On Wall Street, MicroStrategy jumped as much as 7% during the day as it continues to benefit from the surging price for bitcoin, which set another all-time high.

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