LIVE MARKETS-Stocks fall: Fed minutes, trade worries; TACO in focus

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STOCKS FALL: FED MINUTES, TRADE WORRIES; TACO IN FOCUS

Wall Street indexes closed lower after sticking close to flat for much of Wednesday's session and then losing steam in the last hour as investors appeared to be reacting to a report about the latest salvo in the U.S./China trade war.

According to a late afternoon report published in the Financial Times, the Trump administration has told U.S. providers of software used to design semiconductors to stop selling their services to Chinese groups, in an attempt to make it harder for China to develop advanced chips.

The Philadelphia semiconductor index .SOX, had entered the last hour of trading with a small gain, quickly lost ground to end the session down ~0.6%.

Earlier on Wednesday, investors got a closer look at the Federal Reserve's last meeting.

Fed officials acknowledged in their May 6-7 meeting that they could face "difficult tradeoffs" in coming months in the form of rising inflation and rising unemployment, an outlook buttressed by Fed staff projections of increased risks of a recession, according to the meeting's newly released minutes.

A key concern at the Fed is that steep U.S. import tariffs could lead to markedly higher inflation.

But of course, since the meeting, the tariff picture has had some edits. Around mid May, U.S. President Donald Trump reduced, at least temporarily, the 145% levy on Chinese imports. And on Tuesday stocks rose after Trump pulled back on a 50% tariff threat he had made Friday against Europe to give room for talks.

And forget FOMO, the market swings resulting from the policy changes have made way for an acronym that's become more prevalent among traders and investors.

The term TACO stands for Trump Always Chickens Out, and was credited to a Financial Times column last month.

Asked on Wednesday by a reporter for his response to the term TACO, Trump said the question was "nasty" and in his defense of tariff changes said: "It's called negotiation."

But for many investors, the biggest event of the day was after the market close in the form of quarterly results and outlook from Nvidia Corp NVDA.O.

On that note, here is your closing snapshot.

(Sinéad Carew, Nandita Bose)

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