Market Still Partying After Cut

Rallies continue off of big Federal Reserve rate slash

By Kevin Spak, Newser Staff

Posted Sep 19, 2007 9:36 AM CDT

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Market Still Partying After Cut — A television screen in a booth on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange shows the rate decision of the Federal reserve, Tuesday, Sept. 18, 2007. The Federal Reserve cut a key interest rate, Tuesday, for the first time in four years, starting with an aggressive half-point move to prevent a steep... (Associated Press)

Wall Street kept the party going today, as the Federal Reserve’s half-point rate cut kept pushing stocks up. Financials even shrugged off disappointing earnings from Morgan Stanley, which posted a more-than-expected 17% drop in net income for the quarter, the Wall Street Journal reports. The Dow rose 58.04 points in early trading, with the S&P gaining 9.97 and the Nasdaq up 19.03.

When news of the cut hit yesterday, the Dow surged 2.5%, its biggest one-day increase since 2003. International markets, too, felt the love, with the Nikkei 225 up 3.7%. Meanwhile, the Fed got some justification for its cut, when the Labor Department announced a 0.1% drop in consumer prices, a sign that inflation is under control. (More stock market stories.)

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