Perhaps even more important than the actual rate hike announcement, the one statement the market was particularly focused on was the Fed's "implementation note", which lays out the Fed's thought process on how it will actually raise rates in order to maintain the Fed Funds in the 0.25%-0.50% range.
Stocks were not impressed at all out of the gate but once Janet started talking, the algos lifted them to the highs (and of course gold was whacked). Crude oil was dumped, along with "sell the news" USDollar longs. Bonds were well bid at the long-end...
There was much expectation that the Fed's announcement would be a Dovish hike based on a reduction in the 2016 median dot, however the Fed did not do that, and instead while the Kocherlakota negative dot was removed, the FOMC kept the median 2016 fed funds rate at 1.4% for year end, suggesting 4 rate hikes during 2016 and that the market is underestimating the pace of rate increases.
Where there was some dovishness was in the 2017 year end median FF, which was reduced from 2.6% to 2.4%. This can be seen in the compared dot plots.
While The Fed is confidently rising rates, the market is signalling its belief that this is a policy error. Not only are longer-dated bond yields lower but short-term money-market expectations for January now see a higher chance of a rate-cut, than a rate-hike.
In her first post-rate-hike press conference, Janet Yellen is about to go to extreme lengths to explain just how dovishly bullish raising interest rates is, despite leaving the Fed Funds forecast unchanged since September (i.,e. not dovish). We look forward to her explaining why she is raising rates now - as opposed to September - as economic data has nosedived and the market has done a significant job on contracting credit already. We also look forward to her explaining how, if rate hikes on the path to normalization are so awesome, why is the willingness to do it so low?