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(Bloomberg) -- Here are key takeaways from the Federal Reserve's interest-rate decision on Wednesday:Most Read from BloombergTrump's Federal Funding Pause Threatens State Financials Housing Aid Uncertain After Trump’s Spending Freeze MemoUS Students’ Reading Scores Drop to Worst in More Than 20 YearsTexas HOA Charged With Discrimination for Banning Section 8 RentersManhattan’s Morning Commute Time Drops With New Congestion Toll Federal Open Market Committee votes unanimously to maintain benchmar

Tax cuts, deregulation, and protectionist policies, sounds like a deal for the domestic economy. But it could upset the balance of things.

Central bank policymakers, in a unanimous decision, paused monetary easing while noting that inflation remains above their 2% target.

U.S. stock indexes are drifting on Wednesday, ahead of the Federal Reserve’s upcoming decision on interest rates and after two days of disruption driven by doubts about the artificial-intelligence boom. The S&P 500 was down 0.2% in morning trading on a packed day, which will also include earnings reports from influential companies like Microsoft, Meta Platforms and Tesla after trading closes. Nvidia has been at the center of Wall Street’s action this week after a Chinese upstart, DeepSeek, said it developed a large-language model that can compete with the world’s best without having to use Nvidia’s top chips.

The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq treaded water on Wednesday, as losses in tech heavyweights Apple and Nvidia limited broader gains and investor focus turned to the U.S. Federal Reserve's interest-rate decision, expected later in the day. Markets widely expect the central bank to hold its lending rate steady in its decision, due at 2 p.m. ET.

The Federal Reserve, which wraps up its latest monetary policy meeting on Wednesday, is about to enter one of the more challenging periods of managing what most observers believe is the approaching endgame for its balance sheet drawdown. That's because even as the Fed is expected in coming months to get financial sector liquidity down to levels that will allow it to stop rolling off expiring Treasury and mortgage bonds from its balance sheet, it will be hard to try to get a handle on how tight liquidity is. The U.S. government debt ceiling is again an issue and until that's resolved and borrowing can rise, the current cap will affect Treasury bond issuance in a way that will obscure already difficult efforts to gauge money market liquidity.

(Reuters) -Oil prices edged lower on Wednesday on a rise in U.S. crude stockpiles and easing concern over Libyan supply, with U.S. tariffs on Canadian and Mexican imports also in focus. Brent crude futures were down 44 cents, or 0.57%, at $77.05 a barrel by 1400 GMT. The White House said on Tuesday that U.S. President Donald Trump still plans to impose 25% tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico on Saturday.