Closing Bell: Stocks Sink Following Fed Decision to Leave Rates Unchanged 3/18/26

Closing Bell

CNBC

News, Business

4.4 • 139 Ratings

🗓️ 18 March 2026

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The major averages fell during the final hour of trade – following the Fed decision and Chair Powell’s news conference. The Wharton School’s Jeremy Siegel, CMBC Americas’ Joe Lavorgna and Robinhood’s Stephanie Guild tell us what they think is next for the fed – and the market. Plus, we dig into how rates are impacting refinance demand. And, we run through what to watch from Micron’s report in Overtime.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to closing bell. That was Fed Chair Jerome Powell. No rate cut as expected.
0:05.6	Stocks didn't initially react to that news, but look at the charts if you can. During Powell's remarks,
0:11.5	the Dow dropped about 200 points from down 400 plus to down 600 plus where we are on now.
0:17.3	All the major averages down at least a percent and near their lows of the session as we start
0:22.0	the last hour of the trading day and we're going to break down what it all means welcome to closing
0:26.9	bell i am john fort in for scott wapner let's get straight to our panel for reaction
0:31.5	wharton's school professor of finance and wisdom trees chief economist jeremy segal
0:36.1	s mbc america's chief economist joe Siegel, SMBC America's chief economist,
0:39.0	Joe LaVornia, new title there, and Robin Hood's Stephanie Guild.
0:43.6	Guys, welcome.
0:45.2	Professor, I want to start with you here.
0:48.3	What jumped out at you from both the Fed's statement and from the commentary especially that we just heard
0:55.8	from all of those press questions i mean the amount of uncertainty over
1:00.1	what's going to happen with this energy shock
1:03.0	uh... the fact that they might have to change the dots on the dot plots and the
1:06.4	importance of consumer
1:08.2	uh... inflation expectations jumped out of me.
1:17.5	Well, John, honestly, the most surprising thing was basically what Powell said to Trump,
1:20.1	you're not getting rid of me unless you dropped the suit.
1:25.5	Because now, it's interesting.
1:29.6	This is what I interpret, he think.
1:32.3	Even if Warsh is... I mean, Tillis drops his objection and say,
	...

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