Welcome to Seeking Alpha's Wall Street Lunch, our afternoon update on today's market action, news, and analysis.

Good afternoon, today's Thursday, March 19th, and I'm your host, Kim Khan.

Our top story so far, to paraphrase Kaiser Soze, just like that, it's gone.

Markets now see little chance the Federal Reserve cuts rates this year.

Just a month ago, about 50 basis points of easing were priced in.

Fed Fund's futures now imply nearly an 80% chance that rates will end 2026 where they are today,

and a 5% probability they could be even higher,

as global central banks picked up

the hawkish baton for Wednesday's FOMC meeting and ran with it. Take one hawkish-leaning FOMC

presser, mixed in a hawkish hold from the B-OJ, sprinkle on top a B-O-E-9-0 hold vote, and what do you get?

A mess, said Gila Ba, strategist at Jenny. The Bank of England

especially rattled the cage, signaling potential rate hikes to combat energy spikes. Not long ago,

two rate cuts were expected this year for the BOE. Now roughly 60 basis points of hikes are priced

in already. Near-term guilt yields surged to 52-week highs. In the U.S., the two-year

treasury yield, top 3.85 percent, levels not seen since July. Michael Brown of Pepperstone

warned that the B.O.E's tone implies that the MPC may be on the verge of making a horrific

policy mistake. He argued the economy is in a very different place than during the last energy shock,

with a more fragile labor market and lower risk of persistent price pressures.

Markets found some relief when the ECB, which also held rates, sounded less alarmed,

though it did leave the door open to a potential April hike. The ECB obviously looked at that

BEOE statement today and thought, okay, let's not do anything that crazy, economist Dario Perkins said.

Among active stocks today, Alibaba reported wide fourth quarter misses on both revenue and profit,

...