
Stocks were cautiously higher in the lead up to this afternoon's policy announcement from the Federal Reserve as investors took in the latest batch of earnings reports and a round of mixed economic data. The main indexes only added to their earlier gains after the central bank, as expected, kept interest rates unchanged.
Ahead of the mid-afternoon Fed news, market participants mulled over an onslaught of earnings reports. Most notable were results from chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD, +9.7%), which disclosed higher-than-expected third-quarter earnings and revenue.