By Lewis Krauskopf
(Reuters) - U.S. stocks were little changed on Wednesday after the Federal Reserve made a widely expected move to raise interest rates for the second time in three months.
The U.S. central bank cited continued U.S. economic growth and job market strength, as it proceeds with its first tightening cycle in more than a decade. The Fed also announced it would begin cutting its holdings of bonds and other securities this year.
The Fed "met expectations and delivered a dovish hike," said Brian Jacobsen, chief portfolio strategist at Wells Fargo Funds Management in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin. "It's dovish in that they acknowledge the data has softened and they haven't dismissed the weaker inflation readings as being merely transitory."
Data on Wednesday showed U.S. consumer prices unexpectedly fell in May and retail sales recorded their biggest drop in 16 months.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 30.99 points, or 0.15 percent, to 21,359.46, the S&P 500 lost 0.15 points, or 0.01 percent, to 2,440.2 and the Nasdaq Composite added 2.07 points, or 0.03 percent, to 6,222.44.
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The energy sector <.SPNY> was down 1.9 percent as oil prices weakened. U.S. data showed an unexpectedly large weekly build in U.S. gasoline inventories and International Energy Agency (IEA) data projected a big increase in non-OPEC output in 2018.
(Additional reporting by Rodrigo Campos in New York and Yashaswini Swamynathan in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva and Nick Zieminski)