Peter Nurse  

Investing.com — U.S. stocks are seen opening marginally lower Wednesday, as investors continue to digest the recent moves by the Federal Reserve ahead of U.S. President Joe Biden’s trip to Europe to discuss further sanctions on Russia.

The contract fell 110 points or 0.3% at 7:10 am ET (1110 GMT) and traded 17 points or 0.4% lower. It also dropped 85 points or 0.6%.

Wall Street’s three major indexes closed Tuesday higher, with the 0.7% rising, 1.1% increasing, and the closing 2% all climbing.

Last week’s Federal Reserve meeting saw a 25% increase in benchmark lending rates. On Monday, Chairman Jerome Powell called for more aggressive measures in the future to fight rising inflation.

Mary Daly from San Francisco Federal Reserve is a normally dovish leader. Tuesday’s comments were made by her to the Fed members calling for a rapid increase in interest rates.

Russia’s ongoing war with Ukraine and the associated sanctions have exacerbated already high energy and commodity prices, adding to the concerns the U.S. central bank has over domestic inflation. 

President travels to Europe Wednesday to meet with allies of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and European Union to discuss the West’s response to Russia, amid expectations that further measures to punish Moscow are likely.

Russian troops continued their bombardment of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, Chernihiv and the Black Sea port Mariupol on Wednesday as part of the ongoing war in Ukraine.

The U.S. economic data slate revolves around data release at 10:00 ET on February 2.

Adobe (NASDAQ?:) stock dropped premarket in corporate stocks after the software company beat its quarterly targets but was disappointed by its guidance. BuzzFeed (NASDAQ?) stock, however, is still rising following its closure of its losing newsdesk.

Tencent Holdings is a Chinese online gaming and social media company. It posted an 8 percent increase in revenue for the fourth quarter. General Mills (NYSE:) & Cintas(NASDAQ:). 

After industry data showed another decline in inventories, oil prices rose Wednesday. However, sanctions against Russia are still being debated by European countries.

Tuesday’s numbers from the showed crude stocks in the U.S., the world’s biggest oil consumer, fell by 4.3 million barrels last week, confounding expectations for a small increase. 

This session will include the release of official U.S. Government data. 

U.S. crude futures had traded at $112.19/barrel, 2.7% more than the previous day, and contract was up 2.7% to $118.62 by 7:10 am ET.

The price of gold rose 0.6% to $1,932.50/oz while it traded 0.2% lower at 1.1003.