While you were sleeping .. US stocks fell overnight after comments from Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen raised the possibility of an earlier-than-expected end to record low interest rates. As expected, the central bank continued in its plan to trim stimulus, again cutting its monthly bond purchases by $10 billion per month to $55 billion. No surprises there so stocks didn’t react much to the initial announcement, but a remark from Yellen during a news conference rattled markets after she said that “considerable period” between the end of the Fed’s QE program and the first rate increase could be six months. With QE expected to wind down some time near the end of this year it brings forward the timetable expected by markets for a rise to the first half of 2015 instead of the second half. The central bank also finally dropped the US unemployment rate as its benchmark measure of the health of the US economy, making clear it would instead rely on a wide range of measures in deciding when to raise interest rates. At the close of another light trading session, the Dow was down 0.70%, the S&P 500 slipped 0.61%, while the Nasdaq dropped 0.59%.
Posted on: Wed, 19 Mar 2014 22:51:28 +0000
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