Stocks Closed Higher Yesterday Ahead Of Wednesday Afternoon's FOMC Announcement  Image: Bigstock Stocks closed higher yesterday as we approach Wednesday afternoon's FOMC announcement on rates. The market breathed a sigh of relief on the news that UBS would buy Credit Suisse. But given the terms of the purchase, CS shareholders saw their stock drop another -53%, and AT1 bondholders took a -100% haircut. But the purchase did stem some of the risk of contagion, and for that, there was relief. But many of the troubled names did not see their fortunes reverse. First Republic Bank, for example, even after getting $30 billion in liquidity from 11 of the largest U.S. banks last week, saw their shares drop another -47% yesterday. S&P Global Rating's downgrade of FRC's debt rating to B+ (the second downgrade by S&P in the last week, dropping seven notches in total), didn't help. Moody's also lowered their credit rating to B2 from Baa1 last Friday. Nevertheless, Jamie Dimon is leading the effort to raise more capital for FRC. In spite of last week's volatility, which was brought on by the banking scare, the market did have something to cheer about last week. And that was the better than expected inflation readings from both the CPI and PPI reports. And that's led many to speculate that the Fed will still raise rates by 25 basis points on Wednesday, but could signal a pause afterwards, or at least lower their forecast for their terminal rate projections. The first day of the 2-day FOMC meeting begins today, and ends on Wednesday, with the Fed announcing their change (if any) to interest rates at 2:00 PM ET, followed by Fed Chair, Jerome Powell's Press Conference at 2:30. In the meantime, you can be sure there'll be plenty of position squaring ahead of Wednesday afternoon's Fed events. See you tomorrow,  Kevin Matras
Executive Vice President, Zacks Investment Research | 
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