US President Donald Trump's escalating war of words with North Korea has failed to spook global stock markets.
"Rocket man [Kim Jong Un] is on a suicide mission for himself and his regime," President Trump said in his first address to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday.
He also said "we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea" if the rogue nation does not back down from its recent nuclear threats.
The President's earlier threat to reign in Pyongyang with "fire and fury" previously triggered a stock market sell-off in early August.
The latest warning had no effect on Wall Street or European markets — nor was there a flood of investors buying safe haven assets like gold and the Japanese yen, as investors shrugged off his comments.
What happened on Wall St?
What investors care more about is the Federal Reserve's upcoming signals on when US interest rates will rise, and how it plans to unwind $US4.5 trillion worth of stimulus it injected into the American economy after the global financial crisis.
The Fed began its two-day monetary policy meeting overnight.
The overwhelming market consensus is that tomorrow the US central bank will decide that interest rates will remain on hold.
Wall Street finished slightly higher on Tuesday, with stocks trading in a narrow range ahead of the Fed's decision.
Most sectors finished in positive territory, with the S&P financial index provided the biggest boost to the US stock market, gaining 0.8 per cent.
The US also released several pieces of mixed economic data overnight.
American import prices had their biggest gain in seven months, jumping by 0.6 per cent in August, the latest figures from the Labor Department revealed. The main contributor do that uplift was a surge in petroleum costs.
But homebuilding in the US fell for the second straight month. Housing starts fell by 0.8 per cent last month (to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.18 million units), the Commerce Department said.
On the other hand, the number of building permits issued rose 5.7 per cent to a rate of 1.3 million units last month — also its highest level in seven months.
Australian markets
Australian shares are likely to follow Wall Street's solid lead, and open higher today.
It looks to be a quiet day in the sense that no major local economic figures will be released today.
However, once again, the Australian dollar has rebounded past the 80 US cent mark on the back of a weaker US dollar.
That is despite the price of Australia's key export, iron ore, also plummeting by 4.1 per cent.
