jackson hole wyoming mountains
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Ben Bernanke's hyped Jackson Hole speech finally happened.
First the scoreboard:
Dow: 13,090, +90.1, +0.6%

S&P 500: 1,406, +7.1, +0.5%

NASDAQ: 3,066, +18.2, +0.6%

And now the top stories:
  • Earlier today, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke finally gave his highly anticipated speech at the Kansas City Fed's annual symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.  Some Fed watchers expected Bernanke to signal more easy monetary policy in the form of quantitative easing – an effort to stimulate the economy by buying bonds, which would lower interest rates. 

  • However, most expected him to acknowledge the ongoing weakness in the economy while reiterating his commitment to ease should it be necessary.  And that's basically what we got.  From his speech: "Taking due account of the uncertainties and limits of its policy tools, the Federal Reserve will provide additional policy accommodation as needed to promote a stronger economic recovery and sustained improvement in labor market conditions in a context of price stability." 

  • Markets exhibit tremendous volatility in the minutes following the Fed's speech.  After being up over 100 points, the Dow instantly crashed to zero after the speech was released.  Markets then bounced back.

  • Despite the market rally, some Fed watchers were nevertheless disappointed.  Yesterday, Morgan Stanley's Vincent Reinhart wrote that the Fed might use this speech as an opportunity to introduce some conditionality into monetary policy.  However, that was not to be.

  • "In a way, leaders are constantly living up to our expectations, in that nobody has a very high bar for what anyone is going to do about the US economic muddle or the European crisis," wrote BI's Joe Weisenthal.  "[H]e does enough. He provides a 'put' that makes markets feel good the bottom won't foll out. But there's nothing very exciting."