Fed Days Under ZIRP

The last Fed Day on April 27th marked a new kind of Fed Day with Ben Bernanke for the first time holding a press conference after the rate decision was released. The S&P 500 rose 0.67% on April 27th, so the first Fed Day with a press conference went off well. So far Bernanke & Co. are batting a thousand under the new format.

Below is a table showing the S&P 500's performance on Fed Days since ZIRP (zero interest rate policy) was put in place back in December 2008. As shown, the index has averaged a gain of 0.74% (median of 0.46%) on these 20 Fed Days with positive returns 15 out of 20 times. Going back to 1995 (when the Fed began announcing its rate decision on the day of the meeting), the S&P has averaged a gain of 0.37% on Fed Days. Compared to the average one-day change of 0.03% throughout the history of the market, Fed Days have been pretty good.