Dow jumps more than 500 points, closes at record high as Fed opens door to rate cuts
NY Post
The Dow Jones Industrial Average hit its first record closing high since January 2022, and the S&P 500 and Nasdaq rallied more than 1% each on Wednesday after the Federal Reserve signaled that its interest rate-hiking policy is at an end and that it sees lower borrowing costs in 2024.
In its policy statement, the Fed also left interest rates steady, as expected, and a near-unanimous 17 of 19 Fed officials projected that the policy rate will be lower by the end of 2024.
Indexes were flat ahead of the announcement and quickly gained ground after the news.
Stocks sharply extended gains as Fed Chair Jerome Powell said during a press conference that the Fed is “not likely” to hike further and that the Fed is “very focused on not making the mistake of keeping rates too high for too long.”
The Fed since March 2022 has raised its policy rate by 525 basis points in an effort to curb inflation.
“The statement is telling us that the Fed is seeing what the markets have already started to discount, that you’re going to have inflation back to normal without a recession,” said Tom Martin, senior portfolio manager at Globalt Investments in Atlanta.
