The outcome of the FED meeting was surprisingly positive. The FED announced hat it would moderately taper its bond buying reducing it from $85 billion per month to $75 billion. However the FED also indicated that it would be keeping interest rates low for some time to come. The market initially fell on the news but then almost immediately began to rise sharply and rose fairly steadily through to the close.
The S&P 500 was up 1.7% and Toronto was up 1.2%.
It seems that there must be a strong segment of the market that continues to buy the more it goes up.
I would be a bit surprised if this full gain holds tomorrow (Thursday) but one never knows.
Most of our stocks picks were up. Notably Toll Brothers was up 3.6%, Wells Fargo was up 3.1%. I thought about trimming some positions but did not. Lower interest rates are not good for banks but on the other hand Wells Fargo has a relatively low P/E and so I am reluctant to trim that.
Stantec, Couche-Tard and Constellation software were among the minority of stocks that were down (albeit modestly) on the day.
The Canadian dollar fell about 0.8% (down over three quarters of a cent). This is beneficial to Canadian investors with U.S. investments. (Beneficial when calculated in Canadian dollars, but of no consequence if one intends to ultimately spend their U.S. dollar investments int eh U.S.)