The Federal Reserve's Open Market Committee (FOMC) meets every six weeks or so, and after each meeting, they announce whether or not the key interest rate will go up. Of course, this will be big news for Wall St. investors (key interest rates impact how much everyone has to pay to borrow money, so the announcement both affects how much companies are paying to get loans and the overall economy in general...so, yeah, it's a big deal).
The trading on Fed announcement day is an example of the announcement effect, any time trading is likely to pick up due to an important pre-planned revelation. Other big announcements that might affect trading could be the unemployment rate, consumer confidence, Gross Domestic Product, inflation, or any other change to monetary policy.
Interest rate changes can also have an announcement effect on foreign exchange markets as an increase could raise the exchange rates. So you don’t want to miss a “Fed day” or any other big federal news. The announcement moves the markets like it's eating a jar of prunes.
Related or Semi-related Video
Finance: What are January Effect and San...3 Views
Finance allah shmoop what are the santa claus rally and
the january effect Well we actually attended a santa claus
rally last december the energy in the arena was off
the charts Who knew elves could be that loud Yeah
really Ok so in finance land a santa claus rally
is well something else it refers to a rally or
rise in stock prices during the month of december and
they don't even need magical reindeer Teo you know achieve
lift off Why december Because according to you our desk
calendar december is the last month of the year on
for a whole bunch of tax and accounting reasons there
are trades that need to happen before the end of
the calendar year like professional funds need to have a
certain minimum amount invested in the stock market rather than
holding cash or there was some huge hot stock that
they want to show that they at least own for
pa art of the year so they buy it in
december and all investors want to sell their losers either
for the tax loss or just because they don't want
those on their annual report that they owned a million
Shares of dog crap dot com so because everything is
better with acute see name attached well this onslaught of
activity has been termed the santa claus rally and generally
there is more buying than selling as optimism generally beats
pessimism this time of year So historically stocks have gone
up right around christmas All right so what about the
january effect Well because all the buying has bought up
the quote loose unquote shares in the market place or
rather the nervous nellies who kind of sort of wanted
to sell their shares have now sold them While there
simply isn't the supply of shares at lower prices available
for buyers to buy and so with the same demand
unless supply prices go up yeah eq on one first
week and to boot Yeah there's typically an increase in
stock prices after new year's which financial gurus have lovingly
named the january effect Or as mrs claus calls at 00:02:05.17 --> [endTime] santa's recovery period No
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