NEW YORK: Wall Street stocks were mixed early Wednesday as the market braced for a major hurricane approaching Florida and looked ahead to key US economic data.

President Joe Biden warned that Hurricane Milton could be the worst natural disaster to hit the state in a century as residents near Tampa raced to board up homes and flee.

About 25 minutes into trading the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.4 percent at 42,240.12.

The broad-based S&P 500 added 0.1 percent at 5,754.23, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index declined 0.2 percent to 18,143.73.

Wall St gains as investors focus on inflation data

“There’s a lack of conviction,” said LBBW’s Karl Haeling, pointing to uncertainty about monetary policy decisions and other factors.

“You’ve also got the geopolitical stuff going on in the Middle East, and you’ve got election uncertainty,” he said. “Historically, October is typically a positive month, except in election years. So it’s a little bit negative there.”

The Fed is slated Wednesday to release minutes from the September meeting. On Thursday, the market will receive key consumer price data for September.

Among individual companies, Boeing fell 2.6 percent as the aerospace giant suspended negotiations with its striking workers in the Pacific Northwest after two days of talks with the machinist union yielded no breakthrough.

S&P put Boeing on credit watch negative on Tuesday, pointing to “strike-related financial risk.”

Google parent Alphabet fell 1.6 percent after the Department of Justice said Tuesday it would demand that Google make profound changes to how it does business and even consider the possibility of a breakup, after the tech juggernaut was found to be running an illegal monopoly.