All eyes on Federal Reserve
Stocks look poised to open flat on Wednesday ahead Federal Reserve’s highly-anticipated monetary policy decision.
While the U.S. central bank is not expected to tweak interest rates, analysts expect policymakers to try to assure the market that they can keep on supporting the economy without pushing up inflation.
The Fed will announce its decision at 2:00 p.m. ET followed by Chairman Jerome Powell press conference at 2:30 p.m. ET.
By 5:40 a.m. ET, futures tied to the blue-chip Dow were up 15 points to 32,739. The tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 futures indicated a loss of 25 points, or 0.19% to 13,116.25 while the S&P 500 futures were little changed.
Uber to begin treating UK drivers as workers
Meanwhile, Uber (NYSE: UBER) has announced that it will reclassify its 70,000 drivers in the United Kingdom as workers after the company lost a case in the country’s Supreme Court last month.
The ride-hailing firm said on Tuesday that as workers, drivers will be entitled to minimum wage, a pension, and vacation. It also noted that earnings would be based only on the time a driver is assigned to or travelling with a passenger.
Uber had argued that is drivers are independent, self-employed partners who are not entitled to basic rights that are enjoyed by workers.
As of this writing, Uber stock was trading 1.31% lower to $58.08 in premarket session.
Google slashes app store fees by 50%
In other news, Google is following Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL)’s footsteps by cutting Google Play app store fees to 15% from an earlier 30% on the first $1 million in revenue from in-app purchases.
However, the fees will go back to 30% once the Android developers surpass $1 million in app store revenue. The decision, which was announced by the Alphabet subsidiary (NASDAQ: GOOG) on Tuesday, is effective July 1.
Following the announcement, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney – whose company is challenging Google and Apple in court for removing its “Fortnite” video game – said the developers that make the most from the store will still has to pay nearly 30% of digital revenue.
