[New York Stock Market] S&P 500 Surpasses 7,000 Intraday... Fed Holds Rates Steady (Update)

Semiconductor Stocks Lead Early Market Gains

The New York Stock Exchange closed flat on January 28 (local time) after the Federal Reserve (Fed) decided to keep its benchmark interest rate unchanged.

Reuters Yonhap News

On this day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average ended trading at 49,015.60, up 12.19 points (0.02%) from the previous session. The S&P 500 Index closed at 6,978.03, down 0.01%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index finished at 23,857.45, up 0.17%.

The S&P 500 Index surpassed the 7,000 mark for the first time ever in early trading, but gave up its gains during the session and failed to close above 7,000.

The early gains in the stock market were driven by strong performance in semiconductor stocks. Shares of Seagate Technology surged 19% as its second-quarter earnings exceeded market expectations. The company stated that demand for artificial intelligence (AI) data storage remains strong. ASML reported record-high orders and provided a positive outlook for 2026, but gave up its intraday gains and closed down 2%.

However, the upward momentum did not spread beyond the semiconductor sector, and the S&P 500 came under increasing downward pressure toward the market close.

As expected, the Fed kept its benchmark interest rate unchanged at its first Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting of the year. This put a halt to the rate-cutting cycle that had occurred three times last year. The Fed decided to maintain the benchmark rate at the current level of 3.5-3.75%. This marks a pause after three consecutive rate cuts since September last year. With this decision, the interest rate gap between South Korea (2.50%) and the United States remains at 1.25 percentage points.