On Wednesday, Occidental Petroleum was among the gainers on the New York stock exchanges. Berkshire Hathaway, the investment company of billionaire Warren Buffett, has further increased its stake in the American oil producer to about 22 percent.

Buffett bought nearly 5.8 million shares of Occidental recently and now has a stake of more than $ 12 billion in the group. The stock rose 3.7 percent.

The mood on Wall Street remained subdued after heavy losses the day before. However, the remarks of U.S. central bank president Jerome Powell still reverberated on Wall Street. Powell said in Congress on Tuesday that interest rates may need to be raised more strongly and quickly to curb inflation.

Investors now fear that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates again by half a percentage point later this month. In February, the central bank lowered interest rates by a quarter percentage point because of signs of cooling inflation. However, so-called core inflation, which does not consider the volatile energy and food prices, remains stubbornly high.

Investors also processed the job data from payroll processor ADP, which was stronger than expected. The ADP figure indicates the official U.S. government jobs report, which will be released on Friday. In addition to inflation, the situation in the labour market plays an essential role in the interest rate policy of the Fed. A strong labour market gives the central bank more room to raise interest rates sharply.

The Dow Jones index was almost the same after the start of trading at 32,854 points. The main index lost 1.7 percent on Tuesday. So was the broad S&P 500, which stood at 3986 points. Tech exchange Nasdaq rose a fraction to 11,537 points.

Tesla lost 2.5 percent. Analysts from investment bank Berenberg removed the manufacturer of electric cars from their buy list. Also, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said it would open an investigation into 120,000 Model Y cars from 2023 after two reports of steering wheels becoming completely detached while driving.

CrowdStrike increased by 5.8 percent. The cybersecurity company posted more profit than expected last quarter. The outlook for the current quarter was also higher than expected.