Stock market bulls did their thing again on Wednesday, driving the indices higher on encouraging economic news, a batch of reassuring earnings results, and a decision by the Federal Open Market Committee to cut the fed funds and discount rates by 25 basis points each to 4.50 percent and 5.00 percent, respectively. The FOMC decision wasn't heard until 2:15 pm ET. Prior to that, the market traded with a bullish bias, supported by the government's advanced report that third quarter GDP grew at an annualized rate of 3.9 percent. The third quarter growth was remarkable when taking into account the subprime fallout, the housing industry downturn, and credit market crisis that highlighted the July to September period. Residential construction, in fact, took a full 1.1 percent off GDP growth. Offsetting gains, though, in consumer spending, business investment, government spending, inventories, net exports and nonresidential construction kept the U.S. economy on a noteworthy growth trajectory. While fourth quarter GDP is expected by Briefing.com to slow to a pace closer to 1.5 percent to 2.0 percent, the market still walked away from the third quarter GDP report with a sense of comfort that consumer spending and business investment are solid enough to keep the economy out of recession. The latter consideration, combined with reassuring earnings results and/or guidance from the likes of Mastercard (MA 189.91, +32.76), Transocean (RIG 119.37, +4.50), Clorox (CLX 62.57, +1.57), Kraft (KFT 33.41, +0.81) and Weyerhauser (WY 75.91, +1.60), put the market on a bullish course to begin the session. Once again, stocks traded higher in the face of a spike in oil prices that followed another government report that showed a surprising 3.89 million barrel decline in crude stockpiles versus the market's expectation for a build of 400,000 barrels. Crude for December delivery, which dropped 3.4 percent on Tuesday after Goldman Sachs said to take profits, surged 4.6 percent to $94.53 per barrel on supply concerns entering the winter heating season. The boost in crude prices gave a hefty lift to the energy sector (+1.8 percent) which was one of Wednesday's best-performing areas. It was the materials sector (+2.5 percent) that led all comers as strong earnings results from companies like Weyerhauser and Newmont Mining (NEM 50.90, +4.46), and a weak dollar, drove buying interest in the stocks of companies that stand to benefit from rising commodity prices. The dollar index slipped 0.4 percent to 76.479 in the wake of the Fed's decision to cut interest rates. In typical fashion, the FOMC decision led to some volatile trading shortly after the decision crossed the wires at 2:15 pm ET. Just prior to the release, the Dow, Nasdaq and S&P were up 53, 16 and 8 points, respectively. Within minutes of the FOMC's announcement, though, they were all showing slight losses. The knee-jerk selling interest occurred in response to a directive from the FOMC that implied the rate-setting committee is reluctant to cut rates again. That understanding was driven by three items in particular: (1) the committee judging the upside risks to inflation roughly balance the downside risks to growth (2) the acknowledgment that recent increases in energy and commodity prices may put renewed upward pressure on inflation and (3) the indication that Kansas City Fed President Hoenig voted against a rate cut, saying he preferred no change in the fed funds rate. With added time to examine the statement, the stock market got back into rally-mode driven by the takeaway that the FOMC might be reluctant to cut rates right now, but that it would ultimately do so if need be. Fittingly, the financial sector (+0.8 percent) played an influential part in driving the late-afternoon rally effort, yet it still underperformed the broader market in Wednesday's trading. All ten economic sectors closed with a gain. The technology sector (+1.7 percent), paced by ongoing strength in big-cap leaders like Google (GOOG 707.00, +12.23) and Microsoft (MSFT 36.81, +1.24), maintained its leadership role. The Treasury market, meanwhile, was knocked on its heels by the stock market rally and the Fed's talk about the potential for renewed upward pressures on inflation. The 10-year note slipped 21 ticks, bringing its yield up to 4.46 percent. | 
