STOCK MARKET - AN OVERVIEW

stock market - An Overview

stock market - An Overview

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The Fed's decision to pull back on rate cuts next year was enough to raise doubts in the minds of some market participants as to whether the central bank will be able to lower borrowing costs at all next year.

"Market participants are finally realizing inflation is going to remain higher for longer," said Phil Greenblatt, a Pennsylvania-based portfolio manager at Easterly Investment Partners, which oversees almost $3.2 billion in assets.

But you also don't have to stretch to pick up yields not seen for most of the past decade. "There is just less need to stretch," Zaid said.

The prospect of fewer Fed rate cuts versus expectations for continued easing by the European Central Bank helped boost the greenback, as did a surge in U.S. Treasury yields.

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"Santa came early and dropped a 25-basis-point rate cut in the market’s stocking but accompanied it with a note saying that there would be coal next year," he said.

"The market is forward-looking and ignored the good news of today’s rate cut and instead focused on the paucity of rate cuts for next year," said Chris Zaccarelli, chief investment officer at Northlight Asset Management.

Investors aggressively sold off long-dated government debt on Wednesday in response to updated projections from the Federal Reserve for fewer interest-rate cuts in 2025 than previously expected.

The equal-weighted gauge was already struggling in December as a number of large-cap stocks turned lower. An ETF that tracks the index was recently down nearly 7% since the start of the month, according to FactSet data.

"You want to be up in quality, staying away from the lowest-rated parts of high yield," Danny Zaid, portfolio manager at TwentyFour Asset Management, told MarketWatch. "If rates are going to be higher for longer, the reality is that not all companies are going to be able to live with these rates."

In a press conference on Wednesday afternoon, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said that inflation has eased significantly in the past two years, but remains somewhat elevated relative to the central bank’s 2% target.

Currently there are two cuts priced in by the Fed in 2025, but given Wednesday's selloff in U.S. stocks, the market was "underwhelmed" by the likely future path of interest rates, Zaccarelli wrote in emailed commentary.

Oil futures ended higher on Wednesday but well below the session’s highs, with the Federal Reserve’s projection of fewer interest-rate cuts next year offsetting some of the bullishness from four straight weeks of declines in U.S. crude supplies.

Correction: An earlier version of this live-coverage post mistakenly described Easterly Partners as a hedge fund and misstated the amount of its assets under management.

Market participants "should have known better that we're not returning to a near-zero interest rate policy,'' Greenblatt said. He added that the "elephant in the room is the national deficit," which is "one of the things that no one cares about until it becomes a problem."

Upstart's management previously indicated that high interest rates were turning off potential customers for its personal-lending products. Rate cuts were also expected to be a catalyst for SoFi's business given its heavy lending emphasis.

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Fed officials on Wednesday projected that they will lower interest rates by a quarter-point just twice in 2025, down from the four cuts the central bank had expected in September.

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U.S. stocks finished lower on Wednesday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average posting its worst day in over four months after the Federal Reserve decided to lower its benchmark interest rate by 25 basis points but reduced its forecast for further rate cuts in 2025.

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"The 2% long-term inflation target set by the Fed has always been somewhat unrealistic, and it's fair to question why the Fed would cut rates 50 basis points in September" with equities and housing prices at what were then all-time highs, he said via phone.

Stocks were crashing lower on Wednesday after the Federal Reserve cut interest rates by 25 basis points but spooked equities by signaling that only a few more rate cuts could be in the cards for this easing cycle.

Wednesday's selloff in U.S. stocks following the Federal Reserve's policy announcement is being fueled in part by the realization of some investors and traders that officials will likely keep missing their 2% inflation target.

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