Wall Street was mixed as minutes from the latest Federal Open Market Committee meeting showed policy makers were looking for further strength in the US labour market before easing the central bank's bond-buying program.
In late afternoon trading in New York, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.20 per cent, while the Standard & Poor's 500 Index declined 0.09 per cent to 1,650.80. The Nasdaq Composite Index rose 0.31 per cent. The S&P 500 today has swung between 1,647.66 and 1,657.92.
"While recognising the improvement in a number of indicators of economic activity and labour market conditions since the fall, many members indicated that further improvement in the outlook for the labour market would be required before it would be appropriate to slow the pace of asset purchases," according to the minutes of the FOMC's June 18-19 meeting released today.
The meeting took place before the release of the latest monthly government jobs data, released last Friday, showed companies added more jobs than economists had expected in June.
"The market's pretty convinced that the Fed's not going to do anything to dramatically change the liquidity that they're pumping into the system, and the minutes support that," Scott Wren, the St. Louis, Missouri-based senior equity strategist at Wells Fargo Advisors, told Bloomberg News.
