Wall Street Today: Apple shares surge to record high as rally picks up steam

Asian stocks are poised for a steady open Thursday, following gains for U.S. shares and Treasuries as the Federal Reserve minutes showed policy makers still awaiting more evidence of economic strength to determine a timeline for tapering asset purchases.

Futures pointed slightly lower in Japan and higher in Australia, and were little changed in Hong Kong. U.S. contracts were stable after the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite both closed at all-time highs. Ten-year U.S. Treasury yields fell for a seventh trading day, dipping briefly below 1.3% for the first time since February, as expectations for an inflationary rebound continued to fade.

It gained 1.8% to close at $144.57, smashing its January peak as some on Wall Street forecast a stronger rally over the next six months with iPhone sales poised to climb. It rose for a seventh day, the longest winning streak since April, propelling its market value to $2.4 trillion. Its shares remain slightly below an intraday record of $145.09, also set in January.

State attorneys general are again going after Google with an antitrust lawsuit against, this time alleging the company abused its power over app developers through its Play Store on Android.

The case marks the fourth antitrust lawsuit lodged against the company by U.S. government enforcers in the past year.

Federal Reserve officials talked tapering at their most recent meeting, but few seemed in a rush to get the process going, according to minutes released Wednesday.

Some members indicated that the economic recovery was proceeding faster than expected and was being accompanied by an outsized rise in inflation, both making the case for taking the Fed's foot off the policy pedal.

However, the prevailing mindset was that there should be no rush and markets must be well prepared for any shifts. Most members agreed, according to the minutes, that the economy had yet to meet the "substantial further progress" benchmark the Fed has set out for any significant shifts in policy.

Federal Reserve officials held a vigorous debate last month on whether the economic rebound in the US would soon be strong enough for the central bank to start dialling back its pandemic-era stimulus more quickly than expected.

Minutes from the June meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee meeting released on Wednesday showed two prevailing camps wrangling over whether the US economy was ready for a speedier reduction of its $120bn asset purchase programme.

That debate is expected to take centre stage in the coming months.

The former options trader, who predicted the 2008 financial crisis in his bestseller "The Black Swan," said decentralized finance, or DeFi for short, is managing to reinvent the , referring to the firms that very early last century allowed everyday Americans to gamble on stocks without owning them.

"The Twitter-educated youth should sit with surviving traders sipping aged brandy, shut up, and learn," Taleb said in a tweet on Tuesday from his private account.