In his post meeting press conference Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the central bank was ready to raise interest rates in March and didn’t rule out moving interest rates higher at every meeting in order to to tackle inflation.
Stocks didn’t appreciate the extra information.
The Standard & Poor’s 500, which had been up 1.64% after the press release from the Fed but before Powell’s press conference, dropped to a loss of 0.85% for the day as of 3:10 p.m. New York. Technology stocks, which had been the strongest sector after the press release, fell the hardest after the press conference with the NASDAQ 100 going from up 2.62% at 2:10 to down 0.58% at 3:10 p.m.
For the day the S&P 500 ended lower by 0.15%. The Dow dropped 0.38%. And the small cap Russell2000 lost 1.38%.
But the NASDAQ Composite inched higher by 0.02% and the NASDAQ 100 picked up 0.17%.
