By Gina Lee

Investing.com – Asia Pacific stocks were mostly down on Wednesday morning, with investors on tenterhooks as they await the .

China’s inched down 0.01% by 9:14 PM ET (2:14 AM GMT) and the inched down 0.02%. Chinese data earlier in the day revealed that China’s grew 3.8% over the previous year, and 5.2% in November. It grew by 3.9% in the same period.

With authorities signaling upcoming support for the economy in 2022, all eyes are now on the People’s Bank of China’s loan operations for about the broader policy stance.

U.S.-China tensions are also up, with the U.S. considering tougher sanctions on Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SS:), China’s largest chipmaker.

Hong Kong’s edged up 0.19%.

Japan’s inched down 0.02% and South Korea’s was down 0.21%.

The Australian rate fell to 0.63%

Later in the day the Fed will announce its policy decision. It is likely to accelerate asset tapering and allow for potential interest rate increases in 2022.

The implicit assumption in the Fed’s core is that the Fed needs to tap only 150bps of the Fed’s fed funds brake to slow down the economy enough to stop the inflation cycle. Yet we have never had a cycle peak where real rates have not been above zero, which means the market’s expected terminal rate is too low and possibly far too low,”  Deutsche Bank macro strategist Alan Ruskin told Reuters.

On Thursday, the and followed by the on Friday with their respective policy decisions.

Johns Hopkins University data show that there are growing concerns regarding the COVID-19 variant of the micron omicron. This is a result of the fact that the death toll in the world has reached 5 million.

Inflation remains high, and the flattening U.S. Treasury yield-curve curve in 2021 indicates that some investors face a tough economic period.

“We expect the markets to be volatile primarily because of the back and forth on the COVID-19 news” and “worries again about inflation,” RiverFront Investment Group senior market strategist Rebecca Felton told Bloomberg.

“High valuations and uneven data are probably what we are going to see for the next couple of months.”

On the data front, Tuesday’s data showed that the producer price index (PPI) grew 0.8% and a record 9.2% in November. Core PPI increased 0.7% and 7.7%, respectively.