Wednesday's Stock Market Open: Stocks Dip With Traders Focused On Impeachment Hearing, Powell Testimony

Traders held their breath Wednesday as the U.S. House opened the public phase of its impeachment investigation of President Trump's actions toward Ukraine with testimony from two veteran diplomats.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 37 points shortly after noon at 27,729 while the Nasdaq Composite added 3 points to 8,489 and the S&P 500 increased 2 points to 3,094.

Consumer prices rose 0.4% in October, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported, pushing the annual rate to 1.8%, just shy of the Federal Reserve’s 2% target. Energy prices were up 2.7%, with gasoline up 3.7%. Food prices rose 0.2%. Without energy and food prices, consumer prices rose 0.2%, up a tick over September.

The impeachment hearings kick off with testimony from Bill Taylor, who took over as acting ambassador for Ukraine after Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch was ousted following a smear campaign orchestrated by Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani. Yovanovitch testifies Friday.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell testifies before the Joint Economic Committee of Congress about the Fed’s policy stance and the state of the economy. Trump used a speech at the Economic Club of New York on Tuesday to again criticize the Fed’s refusal to drop interest rates to less than zero.

Google (GOOG) reportedly is teaming up with Citigroup (C) and a credit union at Stanford University to offer retail checking accounts as it follows the lead of other Silicon Valley tech firms pushing into finance. The move comes at a time when regulators already are giving Big Tech the fisheye.

“Our approach is going to be to partner deeply with banks and the financial system,” Google executive Caesar Sengupta told the Wall Street Journal. “It may be the slightly longer path, but it’s more sustainable.”

Google ran into a buzz saw Tuesday over its Project Nightingale data collection program involving Ascension health system in St. Louis. Google and Ascension are moving patient data from 40 data centers in more than a dozen states to Google’s cloud-computing system. Without patient or doctor consent, Ascension began sharing data with Google. The companies say the sharing will enable them to crunch the information to produce better patient outcomes. Regulators are concerned over whether Google and Ascension are complying with HIPAA regulations.

In other news, AbbVie Inc. (ABBV) sold $30 billion in 10-year bonds yielding 3.203% Tuesday as part of its bid to acquire Allergan (AGN).

Global markets were lower

In Asia, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng closed 1.82% lower while Japan’s Nikkei 225 was off 0.85% and China’s Shanghai Composite dipped 0.33%. Australia’s S&P/ASX was off 0.81%.

In Europe, London’s FTSE 100 closed off 0.19% while the German DAX gave up 0.4% and the French CAC 40 lost 0.21%. The Stoxx Europe 600 decreased 0.26%.

On currency markets, the British pound was off 0.08% to $1.2834 while the euro dipped 0.1% to $1.0998.

Oil futures were higher. Crude oil was up 0.79% to $57.25 a barrel while Brent crude added 0.64% to $62.46 a barrel. Gold and silver were higher.