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Wall Street's main indexes fell on Tuesday as markets awaited the Fed's outlook on monetary policy and developments related to U.S. President Donald Trump's call with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on ways to end the three-year war in Ukraine. The Federal Reserve's two-day rate-setting meeting kicks off on Tuesday, and expectations are that the central bank will keep interest rates steady, according to data compiled by LSEG. Trump's tariff measures have sparked a trade tussle with major U.S. trading partners, prompting swift retaliatory actions.

Financial technology firms and crypto companies are seeking to become state or national banks in a bid to expand their business under the Trump administration that they view as more industry-friendly, according to more than half a dozen industry executives. Firms that had been seeking to expand and gain credibility with customers see an opportunity under U.S. President Donald Trump to get licenses that regulators were previously slow or reluctant to approve. Discussions and preparations for bank charters have increased significantly, according to two other sources who are working on potential applications.

NEW YORK (Reuters) -Bond investors are bracing for a U.S. economic downturn, as they pare back risky exposures, while many are extending duration in their fixed-income portfolios, taking in to account a Federal Reserve that is in no rush to resume cutting interest rates. In the run-up to this week's two-day Federal Open Market Committee meeting, investors have been extending duration. Investors have been lengthening duration for the last month at least, market participants said.

Wall Street’s ever-shifting outlook on the reduction of the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet is once again in flux, with a number of banks and researchers now seeing a good chance the central bank may slow further or pause the effort at this week's policy meeting. The Fed's two-day interest-rate-setting meeting concludes on Wednesday, with little expectation for a change in rate policy but some indications that Fed officials are growing concerned that the reduction of bond holdings under quantitative tightening, or QT, may cause issues in money markets while the Treasury Department faces constraints managing government finances under the federal debt limit. “We think the Fed will opt for a slowdown" in the pace of Treasury bond run-off, said Evercore ISI analysts.

Charlie Morris, founder of ByteTree, likens this gold rally to a "proper gold rush".

Shares of Intel, Monday's biggest Nasdaq gainer, are extending their increases in premarket trading as CEO Lip-Bu Tan begins his role at the helm of the struggling chipmaker.

Tumbling stock markets and signs of tightening credit may make the Federal Reserve's job even more difficult this week as U.S. central bank policymakers try to weigh whether consumer spending will suffer as households take stock of the potential blow to their net worth and greater difficulty in obtaining loans. U.S. retail sales for February, reported on Monday in the last set of hard economic data Fed officials will see before kicking off their two-day policy meeting on Tuesday, were weaker than expected. The Fed will release a new policy statement at 2 p.m. EDT (1800 GMT) on Wednesday.