US equity markets erased earlier session losses to settle with modest gains as the Federal Reserve's minutes from their May monetary policy meeting struck a less hawkish tone than many had anticipated - Dow up +52-points or +0.21%, with Boeing (up +%) and McDonald's the leading index performers. However, General Electric settled with its worst single session performance since 2009 (down -7.2%) after chief executive John Flannery said he expects no profit growth this year in its already stagnant power business and declined to comment on whether the compnay would cut their dividend again in 2019. The broader S&P500 +0.32%, with the Utilities and Technology sectors both up +0.9% leading the rebound. Financials lagged with a -0.6% decline. The technology-centric NASDAQ +0.64%, with Apple Inc up +0.64%, Amazon.com Inc +129%, Facebook +1.69 and Netflix Inc +3.95% all higher. Payments processing company EVO Payments Inc rose as much as 26% on its first day of listing on the Nasdaq, giving the company a market valuation of $1.54 billion. Elsewhere, Comcast Corp (down -1.9%) said it was considering an all cash bid for most of Twenty-First Century Fox Inc's (up +1.32%) assets and outbid Disney's previously announced US$52B offer. The Fed's minutes from their 1-2 May meeting - that saw the central bank keep the benchmark overnight lending rate unchanged in a target range of between 1.50% and 1.75%, observed that “Most participants judged that if incoming information broadly confirmed their current economic outlook, it would likely soon be appropriate ... to take another step in removing policy accommodation.” Policymakers once again debated the inflation path, with several noting that recent wage data provided “little evidence” of overheating in the labour market, while some others saw a risk that “supply constraints would intensify upward wage and price pressures, or that financial imbalances could emerge.” Many investors focussed on the Fed's observation that "a temporary period of inflation modestly above 2 percent would be consistent with the Committee's symmetric inflation objective", seemingly suggesting that the policymakers were willing to allow inflation to temporarily push above the target without incurring an additional intervention from the Fed. The US dollar index was up ~0.37% at 93.952 after earlier touching a fresh 2018 high (94.188).
