Equities: "Helicopter Jon to the Rescue as S&P 500 Gains Most in Four Weeks"

From Barron's Stocks to Watch column:

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Jon Hilsenrath, doing his best Superman impersonation to lift the stock market on his back before the Fed announcement tomorrow.

The S&P 500 rose 0.8% to 1,998.98, its biggest gain in four weeks, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.6% to 17,131.97. The Nasdaq Composite advanced 0.7% to 4,552.76 and the small-company Russell 2000 finished up 0.4% at 1,150.97.
Sure, there was economic data today–producer prices didn’t budge in August, a sign that inflation might not be a worry after all–but the market did little today until a video of the Wall Street Journal’s Jon Hilsenrath, who is often thought to be a mouthpiece for the Fed, hit the web. The resulting bounce caused the Lindsey Group’s Peter Boockvar to dub today’s move”Jon Hilsenrath” rally:

This is a Jon Hilsenrath stock market rally. In a webcast done on WSJ.com, Jon Hilsenrath (just a reporter but one who speaks to many Fed officials) is making the argument that since the economic data hasn’t changed much since the July meeting, the Fed will likely keep “significant underutilization” of labor market resources comment in the statement. On the “considerable time” wording, he thinks it stays in the statement but will be qualified as the Fed doesn’t want to send any signals on WHEN rates may go up. As I said this morning, a potential “considerable time” change in the wording is just semantics and focus more on whether “significant utilization” stays in or not.

Birinyi’s Rob Leiphart considers the possible changes and what their impact could be....MORE