What Happened to Stocks, Bonds, and Gold After Fed Rate Decisions: 17 Events, 2022 to 2025

# What Happened to Stocks, Bonds, and Gold After Fed Rate Decisions: 17 Events, 2022 to 2025

The one takeaway: in the 17 Federal Reserve rate changes since March 2022 for which Kresmion tracks outcomes, most assets showed no consistent post-decision pattern. Three cells stand out as one-sided in this small sample: equity volatility (VIX) fell in the day after every one of the five 25bp hikes, long-duration Treasuries (TLT) were lower 90 days after all five 25bp hikes, and gold (GLD) was higher 90 days after all five recent 25bp cuts, with a median gain of 18.97 percent. With five or six events per bucket, these are descriptive observations from one rate cycle, not rules. Past patterns need not repeat.

What we measured

Kresmion's macro event dataset records every change to the federal funds target range from December 2015 to December 2025: 14 hikes of 25bp, 6 hikes of 50bp or more, 8 cuts of 25bp, and 3 cuts of 50bp or more, 31 changes in total. We verified this composition line by line against the Federal Reserve's official open market operations record, and it matches exactly. There are no rate changes in 2026 through June 10: the January, March, and April 2026 meetings all held the target range at 3.50 to 3.75 percent, so the dataset correctly ends with the December 2025 cut.

For each event, the engine stores realized percentage returns for seven assets (SPY, QQQ, TLT, IEF, GLD, DXY, and the VIX index level) over four horizons: 1, 5, 30, and 90 days after the decision. Outcome rows exist for 17 of the 31 events, covering March 2022 through December 2025. The 2015 to 2019 cycle and the March 2020 emergency cuts have no outcome rows, which is the single most important limitation of this study, and we address it below.

Honest limitations, before the results

We publish limitations ahead of findings because with samples this small the limitations are the finding.

1. Coverage is 17 of 31 events. Outcomes only exist from March 2022 onward. Everything below describes the 2022 to 2025 tightening and easing cycle, not Fed decisions in general. 2. Buckets are tiny. 25bp hikes: 5 events. 50bp+ hikes: 6 events. 25bp cuts: 5 events. The single 50bp+ cut with outcomes (September 2024) is an anecdote and is excluded from every claim in this paper. 3. Windows overlap. The 2022 and 2023 meetings sit roughly six weeks apart, so consecutive 30 and 90 day windows share many of the same trading days. The observations are not independent, and one macro shock can appear inside several events. 4. Regime confounding. The five 25bp cuts all occurred between November 2024 and December 2025, inside a strong gold rally. The GLD result describes that regime as much as it describes rate cuts. 5. No surprise decomposition. Markets price expected moves in advance. The canonical Bernanke and Kuttner result is that the unexpected component of a rate change drives the equity reaction, and our raw post-decision returns do not separate expected from unexpected moves. 6. Mechanical caveats. DXY is missing for 5 of the 17 events, so its buckets are thinner. The VIX rows are index level changes, not an investable return. All outcome prices come from one vendor snapshot taken on June 8, 2026. Event dates mix statement and effective date conventions at the margin, which mostly affects 1 day returns.

Given all of this, we report only descriptive statistics: counts, medians, means, ranges, and how many events were positive. No significance tests are claimed, because at n of 5 or 6 they would be theater.

Results: 30 days after the decision

SPY was positive 30 days after all five 25bp cuts, but the whole range runs from 0.06 to 3.24 percent: consistent in sign, small in size. The full grid for every asset and horizon, including the cells we left out here, is stored with the study data.

Results: 90 days after the decision

The gold cell is the loudest number in the dataset: GLD was higher 90 days after every one of the five 25bp cuts of 2024 and 2025, with a median gain of 18.97 percent. We re-computed this figure with an independently written query and the numbers match. It still deserves heavy discounting: five events, one easing cycle, one historic gold rally, overlapping windows.

Patterns worth noting, and the one-event trap

Three buckets were one-sided across this sample. VIX fell in the day after every 25bp hike (median -7.01 percent, 0 of 5 positive), consistent with volatility deflating once a well-telegraphed decision lands. TLT was negative 90 days after every 25bp hike (median -6.99 percent), which matches the 2022 to 2023 reality of relentless duration losses during tightening. And the gold cell above.

Worth saying plainly: with roughly a hundred bucket, asset, and horizon cells in the grid, a few one-sided small-n cells are expected by chance alone, which is one more reason to treat the three highlighted cells as observations rather than findings. Just as instructive is how single events distort small cells. The December 2024 decision (announced December 18, effective December 19), widely described at the time as a hawkish cut, contributes a -23.79 percent one day VIX move to the cut bucket and flips the bucket's mean negative at three horizons while the median stays positive. Whenever the mean and median disagree in these tables, one event is doing the talking.

A separate honest null: the 2022 jumbo hikes were not followed by equity weakness in this sample. SPY was positive 90 days after 5 of the 6 hikes of 50bp or more. That is consistent with markets having priced those moves before the announcements, which is exactly the point the event study literature makes.

Why raw post-decision returns mislead

Decades of research say the surprise component, not the announced change, moves markets. Bernanke and Kuttner found that a hypothetical unanticipated 25bp cut is associated with roughly a 1 percent rise in broad stock indexes, while expected changes barely register. Gurkaynak, Sack, and Swanson showed that the statement language often matters more than the action itself, especially for longer-term yields. And Lucca and Moench documented that a large share of the equity premium (excess returns) historically accrued in the 24 hours before scheduled FOMC announcements, before the decision is even public. Our tables measure what happened after announced changes, which is a different and weaker question than what the decision caused. Read them as context, not causality.

Key takeaways

Methodology and reproducibility

Data: Kresmion `macro_events` (31 Fed rate changes, December 2015 to December 2025, composition verified against the Federal Reserve's open market operations page) joined to `macro_event_outcomes` (456 realized return rows for 17 events, seven assets, four horizons, single vendor snapshot dated June 8, 2026). Aggregations: per bucket, asset, and horizon we computed n, median, mean, minimum, maximum, and the count of positive events, with no annualization and no significance testing. The headline gold figure was re-computed with a second, independently written query. All SQL is stored with the paper record. The macro calendar that tracks upcoming decisions is public at the Kresmion macro calendar; our data standards are described in the Kresmion methodology.

FAQ

Does this mean gold goes up after rate cuts?

No. It means gold went up in the 90 days after each of the five 25bp cuts between November 2024 and December 2025, a period that sat inside a broad gold rally. Five overlapping observations from one easing cycle cannot establish a rule, and past patterns need not repeat.

Why does the study only cover 2022 to 2025 when the dataset starts in 2015?

The event list spans 2015 to 2025 and matches the Fed's official record, but realized return rows only exist for the 17 changes from March 2022 onward. We report what the data supports and flag the rest rather than backfilling selectively.

Why are there no 2026 events?

The dataset tracks rate changes, not meetings. The January, March, and April 2026 FOMC meetings all held the target range at 3.50 to 3.75 percent, so the most recent change remains the December 2025 cut. The next scheduled decision is June 16 to 17, 2026.

Sources

• Federal Reserve, Open Market Operations (full list of target range changes): https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/openmarket.htm
• Federal Reserve, FOMC Meeting Calendars: https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/fomccalendars.htm
• Federal Reserve press releases, 2026 holds: https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pressreleases/monetary20260128a.htm, https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pressreleases/monetary20260318a.htm, https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pressreleases/monetary20260429a.htm
• Bernanke, B. and Kuttner, K., What Explains the Stock Market's Reaction to Federal Reserve Policy? NBER Working Paper 10402: https://www.nber.org/papers/w10402
• Gurkaynak, R., Sack, B. and Swanson, E., Do Actions Speak Louder Than Words? International Journal of Central Banking: https://www.ijcb.org/journal/ijcb05q2a2.htm
• Lucca, D. and Moench, E., The Puzzling Pre-FOMC Announcement Drift, Liberty Street Economics (NY Fed): https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2012/07/the-puzzling-pre-fomc-announcement-drift/

Kresmion Research. This study is descriptive historical information, not investment advice, a forecast, or a recommendation. Past patterns need not repeat.