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

Good afternoon. Today is Wednesday, January 31st, and I'm your host Kim Kahn. This is a special

Fed edition of Wall Street Lunch. No surprises from the Federal Reserve decision today,

with Chairman J. Powell and Company keeping interest rates steady in the range of 5.5 percent.

Wall Street's focus was on when the FOMC will feel ready to start cutting rates.

New wording in the statement appeared to be too hawkish for those who are looking for rate cuts to start in the first quarter.

And after a lot of back and forth in the press conference,

Powell seemed to shut the door on a cut of 25 basis points in March. He said, based on the meeting today, I would

tell you that I don't think it's likely that the committee will reach a level of confidence

by the time of the March meeting to identify March as the time to do that, but that's to be seen.

Powell is more than halfway through his pressor before he said that and it looked likely he would try and

avoid being blunt. In fact it did look a bit that the bond market was trading on the fact

that journalists at the press conference were making a better case for cutting

rates than Powell was for keeping them above 5% when inflation is coming down.

But market reaction was Swift once he finally

mentioned March. Stocks tumbled, Treasury yields were off their lows. The

Nasdaq already hobbled by post-ear in tech stocks, was down nearly 2%, the S&P was off more than 1%, and the Dow fared best down half a percent.

The 10-year Treasury yield was around 4% where it started the day. The 2-year yield was around 4.25%.

The odds of a March rate cut went on a wild ride.

Going into the decision, traders were leaning more and more into a cut with Fed Funds futures

pricing in a chance of more than 60%. That fell to 45% after the statement, and after some

volatility early on in the Q&A they were down to 35% as Powell left the lectern.

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