 Hey everyone, this is Dan. The Federal Open Market Committee, FOMC, finished their two-day meeting today and announced at 2 p.m. today 0.25% increase in the Fed funds rate. The FOMC statement was also posted at 2 p.m. today. The 0.25% rate hike was widely expected in the last few days. It was therefore not a bearish surprise to the market. Since the FOMC statement was moderately dovish compared to the previous FOMC statement, the market started to go up after 2 p.m. Then at 2.30 p.m. Fed Chair Jerome Powell started his press conference. The market was holding steady when Chair Powell was reading his prepared remarks at the beginning of the press conference. Once he started to answer questions, the market started to drop. And after the press conference, the market dropped even more. Had market closed today, S&P 500 had dropped 1.7% for the day. So what happened? Did today's FOMC decision or Chair Powell's remarks start a new bearish trend? Will the market recover in the next few days? I believe Chair Powell's answers to the reporter's questions today did not give the investors enough confidence about the health of our banking system. After the failures of the Silicon Valley Bank and signature banks in the last two weeks, many investors started to draw parallels between today and 2008, as you might know already, dozens of banks failed in 2008. 2008 was followed by 2009 and 2010 when more than 100 banks failed, causing what is known as a global financial crisis. In today's press conference, 17 reporters asked questions and 10 of them asked questions related to the banks. These bank-related questions are mostly about, one, whether the failure of Silicon Valley Bank and signature bank was spread to other banks. Does the Fed know what went wrong with Silicon Valley Bank? Does the Fed know how to prevent other banks from failing in the same way like Silicon Valley Bank or signature bank? How will the emergency fund recently set up to help the banks be distributed among the banks? What is Chair Powell's thought on the merger between Credit Suisse and UBS? Whether the instability risk of commercial real estate will affect the small regional banks? The reporters in the room and most of the investors watching the press conference were probably hoping Chair Powell to say, we have the bank situation under control. We have effectively stopped the financial contagion and will make sure that 2023 will not be a repeat of 2008. If Chair Powell said that today, the stock market would have gone up during and after the press conference. Instead, Chair Powell was his usual careful self. It seemed that he anticipated the bank-related questions and was speaking from his prepared script, and nothing more than what was on the script. He said the following, and I'm quoting directly from the video transcript of the press conference. Our view is that the banking system is sound and it's resilient. It's got strong capital liquidity. We took powerful actions with Treasury and the FDIC, which demonstrate that all depositors' savings are safe and that the banking system is safe. Deposit flows in the banking system have stabilized over the last week. Silicon Valley Bank management failed badly. They grew the bank very quickly. They exposed the bank to significant liquidity risk and interest rate risk and did not hatch that. We have undertaken a thorough internal review that will identify where we can strengthen supervision and regulation. It would be inappropriate for me at this stage to offer my views on what the answers might be. You know I simply can't do that. Vice Chair Barr is leading this and I think he's testifying next week, so that will be up to him. We will continue to closely monitor conditions in the banking system and are prepared to use all of our tools as needed to keep it safe and sound. In addition, we are committed to learning the lessons from this episode and to work to prevent episodes like this from happening again. Chair Powell did not elaborate on exactly how the Fed can prevent the bank failures from spreading to more banks. He mentioned ongoing Fed internal review 10 times in the press conference. Basically, he was telling everyone that he was not ready to give more details or jump to any conclusion today. That to many people, including myself, is not very reassuring. And that's why S&P 500 dropped 1.7% today. As for myself, I bought and sold the leveraged S&P ETF SPXL in the last few days. I anticipated the market to recover somewhat after the dip related to the failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Cincture Bank. Right after the FOMC press conference today, I sold my SPXL shares and took my 0.4% gain, but I still hold out of long positions. I have not given up on the market yet. I am still optimistic about what the Fed can do and will do to stabilize the banking system. In fact, after comparing the data between 2008 and the data from 2023, I see that the Fed in 2023 is much more proactive with providing liquidity to the economy and to the banking system after the two bank failures as compared to what the Fed did back in 2008. I believe 2023 will be much better than 2008. And I will share my analysis in another video which I will publish in the next couple of days. If you want to see my analysis on this topic, stay tuned and please subscribe to my YouTube channel so that you can be notified when I publish my next video on this topic. I'd like to also suggest for you to subscribe to my Twitter account, which is DanMocketL, so that you can see some of my stock trades as well as receive my latest market updates. As usual, I very much welcome your comments, questions and suggestions. I'd like to remind you that I'm not a financial advisor. I share my stock trading strategies and analysis for educational and entertainment purposes only. If you want to buy or sell stocks, you should make your own decisions and you should definitely consult with your financial advisors before you do so. This wraps up my video for now. I will chat with you again in the next few days. In the meanwhile, I'd like to wish you the very best of luck with your financial investments.