In his testimony to Congress on Wednesday, Fed Chair Jay Powell ditched the ambiguous lingo by confirming his support for a 25 bps interest rate hike at the FOMC's next meeting in two weeks. While rate rises are not particularly friendly to stocks, markets have been pricing in the new monetary cycle for months and were happy to hear that a half point move wasn't in the cards. Going through with the removal of easy pandemic-era support also signaled that the Fed wasn't too concerned about the economic fallout from the war in Ukraine, prompting the S&P 500 to end the session up nearly 2%.

Bigger picture: Despite the advance, all three major averages are off more than 4% over the past month, with the Nasdaq Composite still in correction territory. Powell also didn't rule out a larger move in the future if inflation continues to come in hot, with the next CPI data being released on March 10 (just days before the upcoming Fed meeting). A lot could also take place on the geopolitical stage before then, with Powell acknowledging that the Russian invasion could lead to the reshaping of Western economies due to the effects of financial sanctions.

Over in oil markets, WTI crude touched as high as $116 a barrel. That could be music to OPEC+'s ears, especially key member Russia, which has been facing escalating sanctions. A high-profile meeting of the alliance yesterday saw producers leave plans in for raising collective oil output by 400K bpd in April, with no suggestion of additional increases. Remember, it wasn't easy to bring Russia back into the group during the pandemic, when a disagreement with kingpin Saudi Arabia turned into an oil price war. Crude is now up over 50% YTD, a massive increase, given that we are only two months into the year.