Stocks spent most of Wednesday in positive territory, but went on a roller-coaster ride after the Federal Reserve, as expected, issued its third straight 75 basis point rate hike.
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The Fed's rate hike sparked plenty of chatter among Wall Street's experts, with the main focus on what the central bank plans to do next. Today's move brought the Fed's benchmark federal funds rate to between 3.0% and 3.25%, with projections from the 19 voting members of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) targeting a range of 4.25% and 4.5% by year's end - a half-percentage point higher than where it was in June. Doing the math, that means rates need to rise another 1.25% over the central bank's remaining two meetings (in November and December).
"Today we heard and saw more of the same, and the market shouldn't be too surprised given the Fed and its officials telegraphed that more big hikes were in the cards for the foreseeable future," says Mike Loewengart, head of model portfolio construction at Morgan Stanley. "The market seems to have hoped beyond hope that they would hear some reference to an end to rate hikes on the horizon, but that's certainly not what we got today."
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And that, in turn, sent the major market indexes moving quickly from green to red in the immediate aftermath of the Fed's announcement. However, the wild ride wasn't over, with stocks temporarily bouncing back before ultimately ending lower. At the close, the
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