By Shreyashi Sanyal

(Reuters) – U.S. Stock Index Futures dropped on Tuesday, as investors took advantage of a possible decision by the Federal Reserve to taper faster this week.

After the high-spread Omicron coronavirus variant reached an all-time peak late last week, the mood was cooled by the Omicron coronavirus variant.

Technology and Communications stocks, including Meta Platforms. Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ) – Tesla (NASDAQ) Inc., Alphabet (NASDAQ) Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ) declined between 0.6% & 2% during premarket trading.

Apple Inc (NASDAQ) increased 0.4%, breaking with a trend of its heavyweight peers. It is still on track to be the first company worth $3 trillion in market capitalization.

Participants in the market expect a Fed hawkish tone after Wednesday’s meeting. In order to limit the price rise, the U.S. central banks will probably signal a faster end to asset purchases and a faster start to interest rates increases.

According to Reuters, economists believe that the central bank will raise interest rates by 0.2%-0.50% next quarter. Then another quarter.

In a client note, Lukman Otunuga (FXTM senior research analyst) stated that the central bank would announce an acceleration in tapering starting in January 2022. He also predicted that there will be a consensus to expect inflation to slow down.

“Traders anticipate a rate hike of 73% by May 2022. They also fully expect a 25-basis increase in June 2022.”

According to the U.S. Labor Department, the final demand producer price index (PPI), rose 9.2% in November from 8.6%.

At 6:54 am. ET was up 13 points or 0.04%. ET fell 11 points or 0.24% and dropped 105.75 or 0.66%.