Global Headlines | The three major U.S. stock indices close higher collectively, with a 98.9% probability that the Federal Reserve will keep interest rates unchanged

【US Stock Indexes】

On Tuesday, March 17 (Eastern Time), the three major US stock indexes all closed higher. The S&P 500 rose 0.25% to 6,716.09 points; the Dow Jones increased 0.10% to 46,993.26 points; and the Nasdaq gained 0.47% to 22,479.53 points.

【US Treasuries】

On March 17, the benchmark 10-year US Treasury yield was 4.20%, and the 2-year US Treasury yield—most sensitive to Federal Reserve policy rates—was 3.68%.

【Popular US Stocks】

Among popular US stocks, Nvidia fell 0.70%, Google A rose 1.75%, Google C rose 1.64%, Apple increased 0.56%, Microsoft declined 0.14%, Amazon rose 1.63%, TSMC increased 1.90%, Meta fell 0.76%, Tesla rose 0.94%, AMD declined 0.14%, and Intel fell 3.72%.

【Global Indexes】

【China Indexes】

On March 17, overnight Hang Seng Tech Index futures rose 0.28%, the Nasdaq China Golden Dragon Index fell 0.73%, and the FTSE China A50 Index rose 0.04%.

【Chinese Concept Stocks】

In popular Chinese concept stocks, Tencent Holdings (Hong Kong) fell 1.52%, Alibaba declined 0.08%, Pinduoduo rose 0.51%, NetEase fell 0.56%, Baidu declined 0.91%, Trip.com rose 0.31%, Li Auto fell 1.48%, XPeng dropped 4.68%, and NIO declined 1.16%.

【FX and Commodities】

【Global Headlines】

“New Federal Reserve News Agency”: from “When will rate cuts happen?” to “Will rate cuts happen?”—watch three key signal windows

The “New Federal Reserve News Agency” believes that this meeting of Federal Reserve officials is no longer about when to cut rates, but about whether they can continue to maintain the market’s expectation of rate cuts. On March 17, Nick Timiraos, a reporter known as the “New Federal Reserve News Agency,” pointed out that the ongoing escalation of the Middle East situation is likely to reinforce officials’ consensus to keep interest rates steady. Against this backdrop, the focus of this week’s meeting will be on how officials signal their policy outlook for the coming months. If the Federal Reserve’s wording or forecasts suggest that the rate-cut cycle may have already ended, it will have a direct impact on rate expectations and risk asset pricing.

Apple’s home hardware chief Bryan Lynch reportedly departs

Apple’s home hardware chief Bryan Lynch is reportedly leaving the company to join smart ring manufacturer Oura.

Probability of the Federal Reserve maintaining interest rates this week: 98.9%

According to CME’s “FedWatch”: the probability that the Federal Reserve will cut rates by 25 basis points this week is 0%, the probability of holding rates steady is 98.9%, and the chance of raising rates by 25 basis points is 1.1%. The probability that the Fed will cumulatively cut rates by 25 basis points by April is 3.1%, with a 95.9% chance of no change, and 1.1% chance of a 25 basis point increase. By June, the probability of a total 25 basis point cut is 78.1%.

US government to further relax sanctions on Venezuela’s oil industry

As of March 17, local time, the US government plans to further ease sanctions on Venezuela’s oil sector to boost crude oil output amid rising oil prices due to the Iran conflict. The measures may be announced as early as this week, including issuing individual licenses to more foreign companies to allow participation in Venezuela’s oil industry without violating US sanctions. Insiders say this move aims to promote growth in Venezuela’s crude oil production, alleviating global energy supply tightness. (CCTV)

OpenAI preparing for IPO, possibly completing it before year’s end

OpenAI is preparing to go public, with a potential completion before the end of this year. (Sina Finance)

OpenAI releases GPT-5.4 mini and nano, approaching flagship performance at lower cost

On Tuesday, OpenAI launched its most capable small models to date, GPT-5.4 mini and GPT-5.4 nano, significantly narrowing the performance gap with flagship models at lower latency and cost. GPT-5.4 mini surpasses the previous GPT-5 mini across core areas such as programming, reasoning, multimodal understanding, and tool use, with over twice the speed, and approaches the performance of larger GPT-5.4 in benchmarks like SWE-Bench Pro. GPT-5.4 nano is designed as the most lightweight, lowest-cost, and shortest-latency option, available only via API for developers, tailored for data classification, extraction, and simple programming tasks. These models aim to address the challenge large models face in real-time interaction scenarios due to high latency, impacting markets such as programming assistants, AI agents, and multimodal applications.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang: 100% committed to Israel operations, with staff staying long-term

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang stated that the company is 100% committed to its Israel business, and employees will remain there long-term. (Sina Finance)

Meta Platforms Inc.: Quest headset users will no longer access Horizon Worlds

Meta Platforms Inc.: Quest headset users will no longer be able to access Horizon Worlds.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang: Share repurchases and dividends will be very substantial

Jensen Huang said that share buybacks and dividends will be a very large number.

Jensen Huang: By 2027, revenue from Blackwell and Rubin chips may exceed $1 trillion

Jensen Huang predicted that by the end of 2027, the revenue opportunities from Blackwell and Rubin chips “may surpass $1 trillion.”