The Fed is warming up for near-term policy adjustment

Stock futures opened slightly higher Wednesday night as investors sought to improve the Federal Reserve's latest signals on monetary policy, which suggested the central bank was warming up to a near-term policy adjustment as the economy improved further.

Contracts on the S&P 500 gained. Earlier, the Blue-chip index rose for the first time in five sessions and shook off some of its steep losses from the beginning of this week. The index is also on track to post a weekly decline of nearly 1%, however, to extend a September selling streak in the next few days.

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell reiterated that he believed the U.S. economy has already exceeded the central bank's goal for inflation and said a reasonably good September Jobs report would indicate that the Fed's employment goals to begin tapering had been satisfied as well.

More members of the Federal Open Market Committee also pulled forward their expectations for when interest rates would be hiked from their current near-zero levels, with exactly half of the FOMC members forecasting at least a first hike to 2022 by year-end.

The market and investors' reaction was really an understanding and a belief that ultimately, raising interest rates suggests that there's a strong economy, James Bruderman, 1879 Advisors vice chairman, told Yahoo Finance Live on Wednesday.

That doesn't mean that longer-term interest rates are going to go up overnight, but certainly I think there is downside risk in bonds from these levels for the foreseeable future, he added. I think from an economic standpoint equities continue to be poised to do really well. I mean, we're not going to see the growth in GDP that we have seen up until this point in time, but we see no reason why GDP growth of 3%, 2.5% over the next three or four can't be sustained, and we think that's very powerful for equity. And for the Fed's closely watched tapering process, Powell laid the groundwork to begin tapering as soon as November and indicated that the process could end by middle of next year. Although markets have been anxiously eyeing the start to tapering for months, it is ultimately likely to have minimal market impact at this stage, said Rick Rieder, Chief Investment Officer of BlackRock's global fixed income.

This is partly because the Fed has done a decent job of answering when tapering is likely to begin Most market participants believe the announcement will come this year Rieder said in an email Wednesday evening. In the context of how large the fixed income markets are today, and how overwhelming the demand for income, it s because the asset purchases are likely to be trivial. As of Wednesday evening, two major moves were made in the markets:

Emily McCormick is a reporter for Yahoo Finance.