Ahead of the Federal Reserve’s rate decision, US equities closed in the red overnight, pausing the rally we’ve seen in Wall St. Investors are always preparing for the busiest week of the US earnings season. 

The Dow Jones dropped 0.77%, the Nasdaq down 1.96% and the S&P500 down 1.3%. Communications services and information technology were among the biggest laggards in the S&P500, while mega-cap tech stocks such as Meta and Alphabet are down more than 2%. 

Over in Europe, Germany’s DAX, France’s CAC and the STOXX 600 all closed in the red, while the FTSE gained 0.25%. 

What to watch today:

• Ahead of the local trading day, The market is set to open slightly lower this morning, with the SPI futures suggesting a fall of 0.07%. 
• In commodities, the price of oil has dropped 2.25% amid robust Russian exports and persistent fears of the global economic slowdown. Gold is trading just 0.2% lower, while iron ore is flat. 
• There are a few companies set to release their quarterly reports today, including Beach Energy (ASX:BPT), Gold Road Resources (ASX:GOR), Megaport (ASX:MP1), Nickel Industries (ASX:NIC), PointsBet Holdings (ASX:PBH) and Syrah Resources (ASX:SYR). 

Trading Ideas:

• Bell Potter maintain a BUY rating on Alkane Resources (ASX:ALK), an exploration, mining and investment company. The company is an established gold producer and maintains a multicommodity exploration portfolio. 
• Trading Central has identified a bullish signal in Boss Energy (ASX:BOE), indicating that the stock price may rise from the close of $2.63 to the range of $2.82 to $2.88 over 36 days, according to the standard principles of technical analysis.