– In spite of FOMC decision yesterday being rather hawkish, US indices experienced a massive reversal after the announcement and recovered from earlier losses. S&P 500 gained 1.63%, Dow Jones moved 1.08% higher and Nasdaq added 2.15%

– Fed doubled pace of QE tapering, in-line with expectations. However, median dot-plot showed a 3 rate hikes in 2022 while market priced in just 2. Powell said that it was not decided yet whether rate hikes should follow QE end immediately or whether there should be a pause

– Stocks in Asia also moved higher after FOMC decision. Nikkei gained 2.1%, Kospi added 0.5% while S&P/ASX 200 moved 0.4% lower. Indices from China gained

– DAX futures point to a higher opening of the European cash trading session today

– Media reports say that Senate vote on Biden’s ‘Build Back Better’ infrastructure plan may be delayed into new year

– RBA Governor Lowe said that he is in no hurry to increase interest rates

– Turkish lira dropped to fresh record lows against USD and EUR after Erdogan fired two deputy finance ministers. USDTRY jumped above 15.00

– New Zealand Q3 GDP report showed a drop of 3.7% QoQ (exp. -4.5% QoQ)

– Japanese manufacturing PMI index for December reached 54.2 (exp 55.0)

– Japanese exports increased 20.5% YoY in November (exp. 21.2% YoY) while imports were 43.8% YoY higher (exp. 40.0% YoY)

– The Australian labour market report showed a 366.1k employment gain in November (exp. 200k) while the unemployment rate dropped from 5.2 to 4.6% (exp. 5.0%)

– CEO of Intel said that semiconductor shortages may continue to impact global economy into 2023

– In spite of post-FOMC USD strength, commodities are moving higher. Gains can be spotted on precious metals, industrial metals and oil

– USD and CAD are the best performing major currencies while JPY and CHF lag the most

Nasdaq-100 (US100) rallied yesterday following the FOMC meeting. Index broke above the upper limit of the local market geometry and realized the range of a double bottom pattern. The nearest major resistance zone to watch can be found ranging below 16,450 pts.