At the moment, Wall Street is mesmerized by tomorrow’s meeting of the Federal Reserve’s interest-rate setting body, the Open Market Committee.
The meeting is almost certain to result in no action on interest rates or Treasury purchases or balance sheet draw downs. The Fed likes to announce policy actions at meetings replete with economic updates (the Dot Plot) and press setups. Those are missing at this meeting and present for the March 16 meeting. That’s the date when we’re likely to see the Fed actually do something.
It’s actually almost as likely that the Fed will say nothing new after tomorrow’s meeting as that it will do nothing.
The Fed has already set expectations for an increase in interest rates and the end of its bond purchasing program in March. Repeating those comments won’t count as news and given what the Fed doesn’t know about the Pandemic economy, a big pronouncement on policy ahead of the data would seem totally out of character.
So what happens when the Fed does nothing and says nothing?
Do market anxieties simply roll over to the March 16 meeting?
That’s almost two months away.
Or do investors and traders start to pay attention to other financial stories–at least for a while?
The question is made especially “interesting” because the next week unleashes a flood of earnings reports from the biggest names in the tech sector.
Will those reports become the focus–at least for a little while
Today started with stocks in sell-down mode again with the Standard & Poor’s 500 down 2.29% as of 11:40 a.m. New York time and the NASDAQ Composite off 3.07%.
But as it did yesterday, the market has rallied as we get near to the close with, at 3 p.m., the S&P 500 up 0.14% and the NASDAQ Composite down just 0.60%.
But then, unlike yesterday, it sold off into the close. The S&P 500 closed down 1.22% and the NASDAQ Composite ended lower by 2.28%.
Microsoft reported December quarter earnings after the close today.
