us stock futures hovered near twoweek lows on wednesday as uncertainty over the rajectory of federal reserve policy continued to hobble traders’ risk appetite on tuesday the dow jones industrial average djia fell 154 points or 047 to 32910 the sp 500 spx declined 9 points or 022 to 4129 and the nasdaq composite comp dropped 03 points or 0 to 12381 the sp 500 was up 126 from its midjune low but remains down 134 for the year to date fed fretting was again smothering stock markets on wednesday since hitting a near fourmonth high on august 16th the sp 500 has swiftly retreated 41 as investors feared their optimism that the fed would slow its pace of rate hikes was misplaced “the reset of expectations has put the skids under what had been something of a recovery rally for the major indices which remain well short of their opening 2022 levels” said richard hunter head of markets at interactive investor in a morning note comments late on tuesday from minneapolis fed president neel kashkari reinforced concerns that the central bank was not minded to pivot to a more dovish trajectory anytime soon despite signs headline inflation may have peaked and amid a rash of downbeat economic data this week “the changing narrative among investors is that even if the fed succeeds in engineering a soft landing for the us economy rates could remain at elevated levels for longer and until such time as the battle with inflation has been beaten beyond a doubt” hunter added the shift in fed policy expectations have pushed up benchmark borrowing costs and helped force the ice dollar index dxy to fresh 20year highs both trends are often deemed damaging to us equity valuations record high energy costs in europe which have raised fears of a recession in germany has also weighed on sentiment still equity derivative analysts at bank of america reckon that the recent summer rally in stocks and bonds which saw the sp 500 spx climb 17 off its midjune trough and the 10year treasury yield tmubmusd10y fall to 25 has itself encouraged fed chair jay powell and colleagues to be more hawkish “giving them the fed room to hike are financial conditions which by some measures are near as loose as they’ve been during this hiking cycle this is not new it’s the “fed call” dynamic we’ve been writing about all year the fed has implicitly sold a call on the market where looser financial conditions require and allow the fed to act more aggressively against inflation” said bofa in a note “we think the current setup creates a risk that the fed hikes aggressively next month and that powell may try to point the market that way at jackson hole equities in particular may have more to lose as they have been the largest driver in the recent easing of financial conditions” the bofa strategists concluded fed chair jay powell is due to make a speech on friday at the jackson hole symposium us economic data on the slate for wednesday include the july durable goods report due 830 am eastern and the july pending home sales at 10 am eastern and after the closing bell the market will receive earnings updates from a trio of once highflying technology stocks nvidia nvda  salesforce crm and snowflake snow  meanwhile the saga of memestock favorite bed bath  beyond bbby took another twist after the wall street journal reported the struggling retailer had lined up a financing source to shore up its liquidity how are other assets faring   oil futures were higher with us crude cl1 adding 07 to 9436 a barrel ahead of the us weekly energy inventory data due at 1030 am eastern   the 10year treasury yield tmubmusd10y dipped less than 1 basis point to 3044 and german 10year bund yields tmbmkde10y rose 3 basis points to 135