Thomson Reuters

• Stocks wavered Wednesday amid strong earnings and concerns about rising rates. 

• A sell-off had shaved thousands of points from the major US indices last week.

• Watch US stocks trade in real time here.

The three major US indices slipped Wednesday as an earnings-fueled rally lost steam and amid concerns about rising rates, with Wall Street still on edge in wake of a sell-off that had battered global stocks last week.

Capping a volatile day of trading, the Dow Jones industrial average ended down 0.4% after earlier clawing its way up from a 300-point loss. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq composite wavered before giving up session gains and ending slightly negative.

"The mood has turned sour, reflecting a mix of political noise and a few soggy data prints," said Mark McCormick, a strategist at TD Securities.

Stocks have found some refuge in strong corporate earnings reports, with big banks flying past Wall Street expectations on Tuesday. Netflix also beat and added nearly 7 million subscriptions, while IBM missed.

With unemployment at multi-decade lows and signs wage growth could pick up, all eyes were on minutes from the latest Federal Reserve meeting. The central bank signaled it would continue gradually increasing interest rates, once more this year and around three times in 2019.

But Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, thinks the minutes also revealed emerging worries among officials that the tightening labor market "is a threat to future inflation and might require a period in which rates rise above neutral."

While the Federal Reserve sees the economy as "evolving about as anticipated," it continued to cite uncertainty regarding trade policy. Growing protectionism could increase unit prices and hinder economic growth, the minutes said.

Before the US open, government data showed housing starts fell more than expected in September. Homebuilding across the country dropped 5.3% last month, the Commerce Department said, with particularly weak construction activity in the South.

Economists said Hurricane Florence probably played a role in downward revisions to August housing starts. But a potential slowdown in the housing market has been widely anticipated. Existing homes sales are scheduled to be released Friday.

Elsewhere, cannabis stocks tumbled on the first day of pot legalization in Canada. Tilray shed more than 7%, while Canopy Growth was down nearly 5%. Ottawa is the second in the world to authorize recreational marijuana use nationwide.

On the commodities front, West Texas Intermediate crude oil tumbled below $70 to its lowest level in nearly a month after government data showed US inventories climbed for a fourth week. Caroline Bain, chief commodities economist at Capital Economics, said stockpiles should "soon start to exert some downward pressure on prices."

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