Stocks gained Wednesday afternoon as investors digested a key monetary policy decision from the Federal Reserve, which included a formal announcement of the central bank’s start to tapering its pandemic-era asset purchases.
The S&P 500, Dow and Nasdaq each rose to record levels for another session. As had been widely expected, the Federal Reserve said on Wednesday that it was going to begin slowing the pace of purchases in its crisis-era asset purchase program starting this month. This had been one of the primary tools helping to underpin the economic recovery and financial markets over the course of the pandemic. That asset purchase program has been taking place with $120 billion worth of agency mortgage-backed securities and Treasurys per month over the past more than year.
“In light of the substantial further progress the economy has made toward the Committee’s goals since last December, the Committee decided to begin reducing the monthly pace of its net asset purchases by $10 billion for Treasury securities and $5 billion for agency mortgage-backed securities,” according to the FOMC statement.