Fed Meeting Minutes Reveal Split on Rate Cuts; Walmart Outage

Federal Reserve Meeting Minutes

• 💡 The minutes from the Fed's December meeting show that most, but not all, policymakers support continuing to cut interest rates.
• ⚠️ Some members argued for pausing rate cuts due to a perceived rising risk of entrenched higher inflation.
• 📊 Earlier in the month, Fed members voted 9 to 3 to lower their benchmark interest rate by a quarter percentage point for the third consecutive time.

Walmart Online Outage

• 🛒 Thousands of shoppers encountered issues accessing Walmart's services online today, affecting both the app and website.
• 💻 Downdetector also reported some outages for Microsoft's cloud computing service, which Walmart uses.
• ✅ The issue has since been resolved.

Stock Market Performance

• 📈 Wall Street indexes were slightly lower midday, with the Dow, NASDAQ, and S&P 500 each down by about a tenth of a percent.