U.S. Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s remarks on Wednesday signaled a likely slowing down in interest rate hikes as soon as the central bank’s mid-December meeting, causing mixed results in equity markets. The S&P 500 index and Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 0.09% and 0.56%, respectively, while the Nasdaq Composite was up 0.13%. Nicholas Colas, co-founder of the market analysis firm DataTrek Research, wrote in a note that as much as Powell is “trying to contain investors’ animal spirits by talking about persistently high interest rates, markets are rejecting that message.” Colas added, “Instead, [markets] are looking through his rhetoric and think they see the inflection point for monetary policy.”
