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The British pound fell off session highs on Wednesday following news that British lawmakers voted in favor of changing Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit plan. This is only the latest hiccup in the arduous process that has been the U.K.’s attempt to exit the European Union. It also comes as a set back to last week’s news that sufficient progress had been made to move into the next phase of talks. The British pound remained in positive territory, propped up by a sliding U.S. dollar, which fell after the Federal Reserve raised interest rates but failed to update its forward guidance for the future interest rate hikes and inflation, according to market participants. One pound last bought $1.3369, up 0.4%, while the euro gained 0.1% against sterling at £0.8815.

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U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May suffered a defeat in parliament Wednesday, after members of her party voted to amend her Brexit blueprint, according to media reports. The move is expected to complicate May’s efforts to exit the European Union in a smooth and orderly way. Members of parliament voted 309 to 305 in favor of an amendment that would require any final deal with the EU to be approved by statute passed by parliament.

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The U.S. dollar dropped against its major rivals after the Federal Reserve hiked interest rates by 25 basis points on Wednesday and left its forecast for future rate hikes and inflation unchanged. A news conference, which will be the last of current chairwoman Janet Yellen before she hands over the reins to Jerome Powell, will follow at 2.30 p.m. Eastern. The rate hike had been much anticipated by traders and was priced almost entirely into Fed funds futures, which put more weight on the central bank’s forward guidance. But traders were looking for clues for 2018 policy were disappointed. The greenback briefly fell to new session lows, with the ICE U.S. Dollar Index slipping by 0.5% at 93.635, while the euro , the buck’s main rival, rose 0.5% to $1.1798.

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Analysts at RBC Capital Markets think that Nvidia Corp. will continue to benefit from the mining of cryptocurrencies in 2018, even if the Ethereum blockchain moves past the use of graphics-processing units as Bitcoin has. The analysts pointed out that there are plenty of newer cryptocurrencies for which miners could use GPUs, including monero, bitcoin gold and ethereum classic. “The near-term dynamics remain positive and without a material change to the algorithm we find it highly unlikely the opportunity goes to zero next year,” they wrote in a note to clients Tuesday. “Importantly, even if the algorithms change to proof of stake long term, we believe that the need to build out a decentralized world computer will command material compute power benefiting companies such as Nvidia,” they added. Susquehanna analyst Chris Rolland made a similar point about Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. in a Tuesday note, pointing out that Ethereum joining Bitcoin as an ASIC-driven mining task would be a “modest negative” for those two companies. Nvidia shares have gained 75% so far this year, while the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index is up 36% and the S&P 500 is up 19%.

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Starbucks Corp.’s market share for at-home ground coffee was 16.2% for the four weeks ending Dec. 2, reaching 2017 highs for both the K-Cup and traditional ground coffee segment. K-Cup market share was up about 130 basis points month-over-month to 18.9% according to Nielsen numbers quoted in a UBS note. And ground coffee was up 70 basis points month-over-month to 13.6%. Ground coffee sales rose 4.1% year-over-year, outperforming the 0.7% growth for the broader category. “Starbucks demonstrated another solid month of U.S. single-serve and traditional ground coffee performance against sluggish category trends,” analysts led by Dennis Geiger. “We believe Starbucks’ brand strength, loyalty, product, innovation and channel expansion support continued share gains, with international CPG a significant opportunity to drive additional channel development segment growth.” UBS rates Starbucks shares buy with a $64 price target. Shares are up 7.2% for the year to date while the S&P 500 is up 19.1% for the period.

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Share of Priceline Group Inc. rose 0.2% in midday trading after analysts at Cowen and Co. dubbed the stock one of their “best ideas” for 2018. The analysts, led by Kevin Kopelman, think there are several misconceptions on Wall Street about Priceline’s stock, which has fallen 7.6% in the last three months. Kopelman doesn’t think that Priceline is moving away from Alphabet Inc.’s Google with its ad spending, and he views the company as Google’s “travel wingman,” even as the search platform changes its ad mix. “While there are some negatives for Priceline in the mix shift within Google results from traditional search ads to meta-search ads (i.e. “Hotel Finder”), we think Priceline is structurally positioned to continue to win on the channel — versus other online-travel agencies and the hotel chains — given Priceline’s leading conversion rates,” he wrote. Kopelman also thinks that Priceline “pulled away from the competition” in the 2017 fiscal year, posting stronger growth in contribution profit than rival Expedia Inc. . Priceline shares have gained 18% so far this year, while Expedia’s stock is up 4.7%. The S&P 500 has risen 19% in that time.

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House and Senate leaders have reached agreement in principle on a tax plan, according to reports Wednesday. Members of a conference committee are scheduled to meet in open session at 2 p.m. Eastern, after several of them have lunch with President Donald Trump. Trump wants to sign a tax bill by the end of the year.

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Target Corp. said Wednesday that it has agreed to acquire Shipt, an online same-day grocery delivery company, for $550 million in cash. The deal is expected to close before the end of 2017. Target shares are up 1.6% in Wednesday trading. Target expects to make same-day delivery service to guests at about half of the company’s 1,834 stores by early 2018 and at the majority of stores before the 2018 holiday season. By the end of 2019, same-day delivery will include all major merchandise categories, the company said. Shipt was founded in Birmingham, AL in 2014. A membership-based grocery marketplace that uses a network of more than 20,000 personal shoppers for same-day delivery, Shipt will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Target and continue to operate independently. Shipt’s Chief Executive Bill Smith will continue in his role, reporting to Target’s Chief Operating Officer John Mulligan. All employees will continue to work from offices in Birmingham and San Francisco. The acquisition is a credit positive for Target, according to Moody’s lead retail analyst Charlie O’Shea. “While it will not affect Target’s capability this holiday season, the fact that Target will have this service in place during 2018 will significantly improve its online competitive position as the service is integrated and rolled out to customers,” said O’Shea. “This is yet another example of a brick-and-mortar retailer leveraging its physical assets to improve its online offerings.” Target’s stock is down 20.2% for the last year while the S&P 500 index is up 17.6% for the period.

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The Dow industrials were headed for a fresh record close on Wednesday, powered in part by a trio of industrial stocks. Leading the charge were shares of Boeing Co., up 1.6%, or $4.60, contributing about 30 points to the Dow Jones Industrial Average’s late-morning advance. A $1 move in any one of the 30 Dow components equates to a 6.83-point swing in the price-weighted benchmark Caterpillar Inc. , up 3.1%, or $4.48, and 3M Co. [sL MMM] combined to add another 50 points to the blue-chip gauge. The Dow most recently up 156 points, or 0.6%, at 24,654. Talk of the House and Senate reaching a tentative deal on a tax package and discussions of a infrastructure plan to follow, helped to bolster gains on Wall Street. The S&P 500 index , meanwhile, was up 0.3% at 2,670. Both the Dow and S&P 500 were trading in record territory. The Nasdaq Composite Index was up 0.4% at 6,889, not far from its own record.

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