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

Good afternoon. Today is Wednesday, July 30th, and I'm your host, Kim Khan. This is a special Fed edition of Wall Street Lunch.

The Federal Reserve kept interest rates steady at 4.25 to 4.5% as expected.

But the FOMC was not unanimous in its decision, with the vote 9-2 for no move.

Fed Governor Adriana Coogler missed a meeting due to personal matters,

while Governor Chris Waller and Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman voted for a quarter-point rate cut.

It's the first time two FOMC members have dissented

since 1993 when Alan Greenspan was Fed Chairman. Waller and Bowman were appointed by President

Donald Trump, who favors massive rate cuts, and Waller has been tipped as a potential replacement

for Fed Chairman J. Powell. Bowman also dissented in September, but that time she voted for a smaller

rate cut than 50 basis points.

At the press conference, Powell offered few assurances on the path of rate cuts either way, as usual.

He acknowledged two-sided risk on inflation and employment, but the markets judged his comments as leaning hawkish on monetary policy.

He said it was early days to assess tariff-driven inflation, and a long way to go to see

how that plays out. But he noted that tariffs are already causing a measurable effect on goods

inflation, and even without tariffs, it's a little bit above target. A reasonable base case is that

the effects on inflation could be short-lived, Powell said, but it's also possible that the

inflationary effects could instead be more persistent. We're going to make a judgment call based

on all of that data. But what the markets heard was that the case for a September rate cut

is going to be tough to make, and the odds of a quarter-point cut in two months fell below

50% for the first time since May. The odds of two quarter point cuts by the end of the year are now a coin toss.

Stock sold off steadily as Powell spoke, wiping out gains held onto after the decision,

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