The next Federal Reserve meeting is taking place next week fuelling speculations that stimulus cut begin as early as next next which caused the second consecutive drop in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index.

Cisco Systems Inc. dropped 1.6 percent while Laboratory Corp. of America Holdings plummeted 11 percent following a profit forecast that did not match analysts’ expectations. MasterCard Inc. (MA) gained 3.5 percent following the announcement that its board of directors approved to increase dividend by 83 percent and to split stocks by 10 for 1.

Although hitting a record level on 8th December, the S&P 500 lost 1.1 percent yesterday prolonging a two-day slide to 1.5 percent, marking the biggest slide since 7th November. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 129.6 points as the volume of daily exchange of stocks exceeded the three-month average by 6.5 percent.

The Quantitative Easing of the Federal Reserve helped the S&P 500 climb 167 percent higher than its bear-market low in 2009 and the benchmark gauge gained 25 percent this year and is competing with the advance of 2003 as the biggest annual increase since 1998.