Well, the Fed meeting and announcement has come and gone. All the drama is over. At the end of the day, Fed Chair Janet Yellen decided to leave interest rates unchanged for now, citing weakness abroad as one of the reasons for such delay. It's not often that the world's chief central bank looks outside its borders to determine monetary policy, but such was the case this afternoon. While there was a bit of back and forth in U.S. equity markets when the announcement was first made, stock prices finally surged higher - until the bond market closed. In fact, it was as if the bond and stock markets heard two different announcements. Generally speaking, treasury yields and stock prices tend to move in the same direction. In the chart below, you'll see that to be the case intraday over the past several days until the announcement was made. It was frenzied buying in treasuries as yields plunged. Surprisingly, however, the S&P 500 surged higher, moving 100% opposite the 10 year treasury yield. Once the bond market closed at 3pm EST, though, the S&P 500 did a little "catching up" and sizable gains were erased by day's end. Check this out:
You can see that the 10 year treasury yield and the S&P 500 move mostly in unison. But at 2pm EST today, the TNX fell like a rock while S&P 500 prices surged higher (red shaded area). Then the bond market closed and equities sold off hard.
Happy trading!
Tom
