With just over a half-hour to go in the session, the stock market was back where it started prior to the Federal Open Market Committee’s January interest-rate decision.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell spoke and took questions for roughly 50 minutes on Wednesday. Though the stock market initially fell when the FOMC seemed to remove language about progress toward its 2% inflation goal, Powell walked that back, describing it as “a little bit of language clean up.”
The new wording “was not meant to send a signal—other than this: You can take away from all of this that we remain committed to achieving our 2% inflation goal sustainably,” Powell said.
The Dow was down 32 points, or 0.1%, after Powell wrapped up his conference. The S&P 500 was down 0.3%. The Nasdaq Composite was down 0.4%.