It was the start of a monumentally important week on Wall Street as the Fed will consider whether to raise interest rates midweek. It is widely expected that after the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee’s two day meeting on Wednesday, the Fed will decide to raise interest rates by a quarter percentage point, the first such rise in the key lending rate in nearly a decade. The expectation has been based on Fed Chair Janet Yellen’s comments that she’d like to see rates rise before the end of 2015. Stocks eaked out some small gains, thanks to a small rise in the price of oil. U.S. crude oil settled up 69 cents, or 1.94 percent, at $36.31 a barrel, ending a six-day drop in the price of a barrel of crude, that took it to its lowest level in nearly seven years.
More on what a rate hike could mean from CNBC’s Art Cashin below.
Here are the final numbers from Monday, 12/14/15 on Wall Street:
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 17, 368.50 (+103.29/ +0.60%)
NASDAQ: 4,952.23 (+18.76 / +0.38%)
S&P 500: 2,021.94 (+9.57 / +0.48%)
