Wall Street soars as Fed holds firm
Wall Street's major indexes closed higher on Wednesday with the Nasdaq's 1.6 percent advance leading gains, after the US Federal Reserve kept interestrates unchanged and comments from its top official fueled investor optimism rate hikes were done even though the central bank left the door open for more. Fed Chair Jerome Powell said policy makers would proceed carefully although they were not yet confident financial conditions were restrictive enough to get inflation as low as the central bank would like. Trading was choppy at the start of Powell's press conference but the major equity indexes started to regain lost ground after about 20 minutes, then went on to hit session highs. This was because the Fed's top official "wasn't as assertive about higher-for-longer" rates as he has been in past press conferences, according to Michael James, managing director of equity trading at Wedbush Securities in Los Angeles. Charlie Ripley, senior investment strategist for Allianz Investment Management, wrote that while there is still a potential risk for the Fed to raise rates again, Powell's commentary suggests that "the bar has become higher for rate hikes." Edward Moya, senior market analyst at Oanda wrote that while Powell insisted he was keeping options open for a hike "he didn’t seem very convincing." The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.67 percent, to 33,275, the S&P 500 gained 1.05 percent, to 4,238 and the Nasdaq Composite added 1.64 percent, to 13,061. In individual stocks, Shares of Advanced Micro Devices jumped almost 10 percent after an upbeat forecast for sales of chips for artificial intelligence signaled progress in its bid to catch up with market leader Nvidia. Estee Lauder shares tumbled 18.9 percent after the beauty products maker cut its annual profit outlook. And shares in Payroll processor Paycom Software sank 38.5 percent after it projected for downbeat fourth-quarter revenue. (Reuters)