(Updates with index/price moves, macroeconomic data, and company/geopolitical news from the first paragraph.)

US equity indexes fell as investors weighed the results of a 10-year government bond auction ahead of the Federal Reserve's September meeting minutes.

The Nasdaq Composite fell 0.5% to 27,466.7, the S&P 500 declined 0.3% to 7,794.1, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average slid 0.6% to 51,180.2 after midday Wednesday. Industrials and materials led the decliners, while healthcare topped gainers.

The Fed is scheduled to release the minutes at 2 pm ET, which investors will parse to assess the path ahead for monetary policy. At that meeting, the US central bank raised interest rates by 25 basis points, its first tightening in more than three years, to combat inflation that has run persistently above its 2% target for several years.

The US Treasury's 10-year auction hit a high yield of 5.300%, up from about 4.83% in the previous auction. The bid-to-cover ratio was 2.77, above the 2.71 in the previous auction, implying a stronger demand compared with the September offering. Wednesday's 10-year auction follows Tuesday's $58 billion in 3-year notes sales and precedes a $22 billion 30-year bond offering due Thursday.

Treasury yields traded mixed after the auction results. The 30-year rate was still up 2.1 basis points to 5.66%, after touching 5.73% earlier in the session, the highest since 2002. The 10-year yield held to gains of 1.1 basis points to 5.28%, after hitting 5.37% intraday, the strongest level since 2002. The 2-year yield slid less than one basis point to 4.78%.

In economic news, consumer expectations for one-year US inflation grew to 3.9% in September from 3.6% in the previous month, data from a New York Federal Reserve Bank survey showed. The median inflation expectations climbed to 3.3% from 3.2% over three years but remained at 3.0% for five years ahead.

In geopolitical news, US Vice President JD Vance has called for Iran to make a "meaningful" reduction in its uranium enrichment capacity as part of an agreement to end the war, Al Jazeera, a Middle Eastern broadcaster, reported.

Excluding inventories in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, US commercial crude oil stocks sank 3.2 million barrels in the week ended Oct. 2 after a 900,000-barrel gain in the previous week, compared with the 1.9-million-barrel jump expected in a Bloomberg-compiled survey.

Front-month US West Texas Intermediate crude oil contract dropped 1.4% to $88.19 per barrel, and global benchmark Brent slipped 0.7% to $99.86 per barrel.

SpaceX (SPCX) is seeking to raise about $40 billion in financing led by Apollo Global Management to buy Nvidia (NVDA) chips, the Financial Times reported Tuesday.

Skydance (SKYD) has effectively restructured the bulk of Warner Bros. Discovery's outstanding notes after completing its acquisition, retiring most legacy debt through a combination of tender offers and exchanges, the company said late Tuesday. Skydance shares slumped 8.3%, the steepest decline in the S&P 500.