Stocks Perk to Fed Hike Stocks rallied Wednesday after the Federal Reserve announced its much anticipated 0.75-percentage-point rate increase to fight inflation, but hinted that it could slow the pace of its hiking campaign at some point. The Dow Jones Industrials popped 436.05 points, or 1.4%, to close at 32,197.59. The SP 500 rallied 102.5 points, or 2.6%, to 4,023.81 The NASDAQ leaped 469.85 points, or 4.1%, to 12,032.42. Tech shares led gains after better-than-feared results from Alphabet and Microsoft. Stocks hit their highs of the session in the afternoon as Fed Chairman Jerome Powell left the door open about the size of the central bank’s rate move at its next meeting in September and noted it would eventually slow the magnitude of rate hikes. Powell said in a press conference that the Fed could hike by 0.75 percentage point again in September, but that it would be dependent on the data. Alphabet shares rose 8% after the tech giant’s quarterly report showed strong revenue from Google’s search business.