Nasdaq hits a record as Wall Street drifts ahead of Federal Reserve’s meeting

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

The Standard & Poor’s 500 index 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 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 Wednesday when the Fed 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 in 2025, along with other economic indicators, once their meeting concludes. Fed Chair Jerome H. Powell will also answer questions in a news conference after the meeting.

For now, the general expectation among traders is that the Fed may cut a couple of more times in 2025, according to data from CME Group. But such expectations have been shrinking after reports suggesting that 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.

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 also may 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 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 new high. But its stock ended the day down by less than 0.1% after bitcoin’s price pulled back below $106,000 after setting a record above $107,700, according to CoinDesk.

The software company has been building its hoard of the cryptocurrency, and its stock price has more than sextupled this year. It will also soon join the Nasdaq 100 index.

Bitcoin’s price has catapulted from roughly $44,000 at the start of the year, riding a recent wave of enthusiasm that Trump will create a system that’s more favorable to digital currencies.

Honeywell rose 3.7% after saying it’s still considering a spinoff or sale of its aerospace business as part of a review of its overall business. It said it plans to give an update with the release of its fourth-quarter results.

MicroStrategy and Honeywell helped offset a drop for Nvidia, whose chips are powering much of the world’s move into AI. Its stock fell 1.7%. Because it’s grown so massive, with a total value topping $3 trillion, it was the single heaviest weight on the S&P 500.

All told, the S&P 500 rose 22.99 points to 6,074.08. The Dow fell 110.58 points to 43,717.48, and the Nasdaq composite rose 247.17 points to 20,173.89.

In the bond market, Treasury yields held relatively steady. The yield on the 10-year Treasury edged down to 4.39% from 4.40% late Friday. The two-year yield, which more closely tracks expectations for the Fed, eased to 4.24% from 4.25%.

In stock markets abroad, indexes fell modestly across much of Europe and Asia.

They sank 0.9% in Hong Kong and 0.2% in Shanghai after China reported lackluster economic indicators for November despite attempts to strengthen the world’s second-largest economy.

South Korea’s Kospi index fell 0.2% as law enforcement authorities pushed to summon impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol for questioning over his short-lived martial law decree, and the Constitutional Court met to discuss whether to remove him from office or reinstate him.

Choe writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Elaine Kurtenbach contributed to this report.