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Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve delivered today.
First the scoreboard:
Dow: 13,536, +203.9, +1.5%

S&P 500: 1,460, +23.0, +1.6%

NASDAQ: 3,155, +41.5, +1.3%

And now the top stories:
  • The Fed concluded its two-day Federal Open Market Committee meeting and announced its new direction for monetary policy.  In short, they announced unlimited quantitative easing.  In other words, they will be buying bonds and keep interest rates as low as possible until the economy starts growing at a healthy clip.

  • Treasuries fell and gold prices spiked.  The S&P 500 surged to 4-year highs, the Dow rallied to 5-year highs, and the Nasdaq jumped to its highest levels in over a decade.

  • Jefferies' David Zervos explained it well: "Everything is still on the table and there is a bias to do more and use "other tools". This is a "I'm gonna ease till your eyes bleed kinda statement."

  • Michael Woodford, the economist who wrote the most talked about paper at Jackson Hole, thought the Fed's announcement was extraordinary.  "The FOMC's statement marks a step beyond recent approaches to providing policy stimulus, in two important respects," he said. 

  • The Fed also boosted its forecas for the U.S. economy.  Specifically, it upgraded forecasts for real 2013 GDP growth to 2.5-3.0 percent from 2.2-2.8 percent.  For 2014, the Fed raised growth estimates to 3.0-3.8 percent from 3.0-3.5 percent.

  • Earlier this morning we learned that inital jobless claims jumped 15k to 382k last week.  Hurricane Isaac accounted for around 9k of that jump.  "This should work its way out of the claims data in the coming weeks," said Jefferies economist Thomas Simons.