Canada’s primary stock index experienced broad-based declines on Wednesday, with pressure from the industrial sector leading the downward trend ahead of the U.S. Federal Reserve’s anticipated policy decision later in the day.

As of 9:38 a.m. ET (1438 GMT), the Toronto Stock Exchange’s S&P/TSX composite index had dropped 89.56 points, or 0.44%, to 20,144.28. Meanwhile, Wall Street saw a mixed start to the session.

Early losses were observed in heavyweight financials, declining by 0.6%, and industrials, which also slumped 0.6%.

All eyes were on the Federal Reserve, set to announce the decision from its final monetary policy meeting of the year at 2:00 p.m. ET. While the central bank was expected to keep interest rates unchanged, attention turned to comments from Chair Jerome Powell during the subsequent press conference.

“With the decision to pause again nearly certain, all eyes will be on the statement, press conference, and the dot plot,” commented John Vail, chief global strategist at Nikko Asset Management.

On the data front for Wednesday, U.S. producer prices for November unexpectedly remained unchanged, with a decline in energy product costs offsetting higher food prices. This suggested a continued easing of inflation at the factory level.

“The report was less threatening than yesterday’s CPI results, though obviously the PPI does not carry the same importance as the CPI and PCE deflators,” noted Stephen Stanley, chief U.S. economist at Santander (BME:SAN) Corporate & Investment Banking.

The previous day’s data had revealed an unexpected rise in U.S. consumer prices for November.

Among individual stocks, Transcontinental saw a 3.9% increase after reporting a rise in fourth-quarter adjusted profit per share. Dollarama gained 0.6% after the discount store operator raised its annual sales forecast.