Powell says elections will not influence Fed policy

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The Fed cuts interest rates by 25 basis points
On Thursday, the Federal Reserve cut interest rates by 25 basis points, or a quarter of a percentage point, and raised the target range to 4.50% to 4.75%. At the Fed press conference, Chairman Jerome Powell told reporters that he would not resign if Donald Trump demanded it and that Trump did not have the power to fire or demote him.

The Bank of England cuts interest rates
The Bank of England also cut interest rates by 25 basis points to 4.75%. Eight out of nine members of the central bank's monetary policy committee supported the move. However, based on Labour's budget, the BoE expects inflation to rise by 0.5 percentage points to around 2.75% next year, more than previously forecast.

Dynamics behind the markets
US markets continued their upward trend on Thursday, driven by post-election momentum. The pan-European Stoxx 600 The index gained 0.62%. The FTSE 100 slipped 0.32% after the BoE warned of higher-than-expected inflation next year, while inflation in Germany DAX rose 1.7% as Chancellor Olaf Scholz fired his finance minister, ending the governing coalition.

How Musk will benefit from this
Elon Musk has campaigned heavily for Trump. Now that Trump is the president-elect, Musk stands to benefit from the relationship. For example, lawsuits against Musk's companies could be dropped due to the executive branch's excessive control over federal regulators, while government agencies may cooperate more with Musk's companies.

(PRO) “The year-end rally starts today”
The S&P 500 skyrocketed on Wednesday and continued to rise on Thursday. While the election results caused excitement in markets, the rally was also driven by other factors such as seasonality, corporate decisions and hedging strategies. “The year-end rally starts today,” Goldman Sachs said on Wednesday.

The rally after the election on Wednesday, at which the S&P Accordingly, the 2.53% increase was the best post-election move in the index's history The Deutsche Bank Jim Reid, Head of Global Economics and Thematic Research.

Some of that momentum carried over to Thursday. The S&P continued its rise, gaining 0.74%. Tech stocks such as Apple, Metaplatforms And NvidiaRose, help this Nasdaq Composite climbed 1.51% to close above 19,000 for the first time. The Dow Jones Industrial Averagehowever, it came to nothing. The 30-stock index hovered around the zero line, weighed down by losses in financial stocks.

“The market is signaling that a Trump administration would be good for growth and risk assets,” said Scott Helfstein, head of investment strategy at Global X ETFs, “but the combination of faster growth and new tariffs would be inflationary.”

If inflation rises again, the Fed will likely maintain its rate cuts. This concern could dampen investor enthusiasm on the stock market for the time being.

Powell claimed in yesterday's press conference that “the election will have no impact on our policy decisions.” Still, the Fed would be influenced by the next administration's decisions.

“Fundamentally, it's possible that an administration's policies or policies put in place by Congress could have an economic impact over time,” he said. “Predictions of these economic impacts would be incorporated into our economic models.”

Data from the CME FedWatch Tool suggests that some caution is taking hold in the market. A month ago, traders thought there was a 60.5% chance the Fed would cut interest rates to between 4% and 4.25% at its January meeting. The percentage is now 26.7%, meaning no cuts were made in January.

Of course, these are all predictions and we know how inaccurate surveys and bets can be.

“By December we will have more data, I guess another employers report, two more inflation reports and lots of other data,” Powell said. The Fed prefers hard numbers. In markets, as in other areas of our lives, this is probably good advice.

— CNBC's Jeff Cox, Lisa Kailai Han, Hakyung Kim, Jesse Pound and Alex Harring contributed to this report.