Traders Love It When the Fed Swings a Soft Hammer

The market has a tendency to react favorably to the Fed interest-rate decision as long as Fed Chair Jerome Powell doesn't say anything too negative. When Powell is clearly hawkish, the market will fall hard, but when he doesn't offer anything new or surprising, then the market will tend to trade higher. This is what happened on Wednesday: Powell didn't offer anything new and made it clear that the Fed is still worried about inflation and wants to see more data.