Welcome to the DC Today, your daily market synopsis of the Dividing Cafe, brought to you every Monday through Thursday to bring you up-to-date information and perspective on financial markets.

Well, hello and welcome to the Tuesday, D.C. today. It kind of feels like a Fed day, even though it wasn't a Fed day in the sense

of the FOMC meeting, the Federal Open Market Committee. There was no rate announcement

and there was no official press conference around rate policy. But because Jerome Powell

gave a speech today and a number of other Fed governors are getting their

moments of fame and then you had a lot of market volatility around intraday Fed talk.

It felt like a Fed day.

So bottom line today, and I'm going to go kind of quickly for you. The Dow ended up being up 266 points,

and that amounts to a 0.78% return up on the Dow. And I'm going to caveat that in a moment,

but the S&P was up 1.29%, and the NASDAQ up 1.9.

So you had a pretty substantial move higher across all risk assets, particularly these

equity market indices.

But the Dow was floating around up, you know, a few points, kind of flattish.

And then it skyrocketed up 260 within minutes of Jerome Powell talking.

And then it dropped to down a couple hundred points. And then it went higher nonstop for the remaining

two hours, two and a half hours of trading to close up 265.

So the point I'm making is that you got a four or five hundred point swing in a few minutes

up for really no reason, down for really no reason, continuing on forward.

And when I say no reason, I mean no fundamental reason, but technically there was a reason, which is the

removal of those shorts that had come into today, you know, believing there was a possibility

of hawkish talk from J-PAL, which I would, you know, I don't really believe in making my living

or putting my client's outcomes in the hands of these

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