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From Briefing.com: 4:20 pm : Today's session was highlighted by a risk rally sparked by the Federal Reserve's decision to increase policy accommodations by purchasing additional agency mortgage-backed securities at a pace of $40 billion per month. The program is open-ended by design, which allows the Federal Reserve to terminate it once the employment picture shows substantial improvement. The S&P 500 was the best performing index and it settled higher by 1.6%.

In addition, the Federal Reserve has released its latest economic projections. Among items of note, the 2012 GDP growth expectation has been lowered, while the outlook for 2013 and 2014 was raised. This year's GDP is now expected to increase by a rate between 1.7% to 2.0%, which is lower than the previous forecast of growth between 1.9% and 2.4%. Looking ahead, the 2013 GDP growth is now expected to be between 2.5% and 3.0% while the previous forecast suggested growth expectations between 2.2% and 2.8%. The Federal Reserve extended its forward guidance, suggesting rates will likely remain at exceptionally low levels through at least mid-2015. Lastly, ‘Operation Twist' will conclude at the end of 2012.

Financial stocks made broad advances following the news. Bank of America (BAC 9.40, +0.43) led all majors with an advance of 4.8%. Meanwhile, Citigroup (C 34.45, +1.40), JPMorgan Chase (JPM 41.40, +1.48), Wells Fargo (WFC 35.55, +1.22), and American Express (AXP 59.05, +1.78) all posted gains between 3.0% and 4.2%. The SPDR Financial Select Sector ETF (XLF 16.15, +0.41) advanced 2.6%.

The materials sector outperformed with a 2.5% gain. The group was paced by steelmakers as AK Steel (AKS 6.44, +0.36), Cliffs Natural Resources (CLF 43.18, +2.56), and Steel Dynamics (STLD 12.40, +0.60), all added between 5.0% and 6.3%. Paper and packaging stocks were lifted as well. Louisiana-Pacific (LPX 14.60, +0.37) and Neenah Paper (NP 30.11, +0.63) both gained near 2.5%. Among chemical producers, OM Group (OMG 20.15, +1.06) and LyondellBasell (LYB 51.92, +2.31) jumped 5.6% and 4.7%, respectively.

Coal stocks within the energy sector made notable advances. Alpha Natural Resources (ANR 8.23, +0.89) surged 12.1% while Arch Coal (ACI 7.39, +0.68) spiked 10.1%. Large energy names Halliburton (HAL 36.44, +0.71) and ConocoPhillips (COP 57.65, +1.11) both closed higher by 2.0%.

The 30-yr yield briefly crossed the 3.00% threshold and closed at 2.967%, its highest yield in four months. Maturities across the rest of the complex reversed their post-FOMC selling to finish the day with fractional gains. The 10-yr yield settled at 1.756% after running to almost 1.840% in reaction to the Federal Reserve launching another round of quantitative easing.

Overall producer prices rose by 1.7% in August, which is hotter than the 1.2% increase that had been widely forecasted. Core producer prices were up 0.2% which is in-line with the 0.2% Briefing.com consensus.

Separately, the latest weekly initial jobless claims count totaled 382,000, which is higher than the 369,000 that had been expected. The tally is above the revised prior week count of 367,000. As for continuing claims, they fell to about 3.283 million from 3.322 million.

The U.S. Treasury has released its August budget which showed a deficit of $191 billion. This was slightly better than the broadly expected deficit of $192 billion.

Tomorrow's economic calendar contains a full slate of releases. Retail sales, retail sales ex-auto, CPI, and core CPI will all be announced at 8:30 ET. Industrial production and capacity utilization will hit the wires at 9:15 ET, while the Michigan Sentiment and business inventories will be released at 9:55 ET and 10:00 ET, respectively.DJ30 +206.51 NASDAQ +41.52 SP500 +23.43 NASDAQ Adv/Vol/Dec 1783/1.83 bln/676 NYSE Adv/Vol/Dec 2406/802.4 mln/647

3:35 pm : Most commodities simply rallied following the Fed's announcement this afternoon, mainly the metals including gold, silver, copper, platinum and palladium.

In the energy space, crude oil popped and displayed some real volatility in the early minutes of the Fed's announcement by selling off to $96.50, immediately after rallying to $98.46 due to the Fed news. Ultimately, that sell-off was recovered as traders bid up oil futures and pushed it higher into the close, ending the day 1.3% higher at $98.30/barrel.

Natural gas spent today's session in negative territory and really didn't move following the Fed's announcement. Nat gas was in the red in early morning action and extended losses as it dropped to $2.96 on bearish inventory data at 10:30am ET. Nat gas began to surge higher, just before 1pm ET, which erased over half of the day's losses. By the end of the day, nat gas ended 2 cents lower at $3.04/MMBtu.

Precious metals are the big winners on the Fed's announcement. Gold rallied as much as approx. $50/oz, while silver surged as much as $2/oz (or 6%) all due to the Fed's announcement. By the end of the floor trading session, Dec gold ended 2.2% higher at $1772/oz and Dec silver finished 4.1% higher at $34.67/oz.DJ30 +209.51 NASDAQ +43.11 SP500 +23.54 NASDAQ Adv/Vol/Dec 1787/1543.6 mln/672 NYSE Adv/Vol/Dec 2368/564 mln/669

4:20PM Analogic beats by $0.50, beats on revs; guides for high single-digit organic revenue growth in FY13 (ALOG) 69.19 +0.44 : Reports Q4 (Jul) earnings of $1.32 per share, excluding non-recurring items, $0.50 better than the Capital IQ Consensus Estimate of $0.82; revenues rose 11.6% year/year to $151 mln vs the $140.6 mln consensus. "Continuing to improve on our fiscal 2012 baseline, for fiscal 2013 we expect another year of high single-digit organic revenue growth (consensus calls for 7% total rev growth -- not organic -- over FY12 rev just reported) on continued improving non-GAAP operating margin."

4:01PM Methode Electronics names new Chairman of the Board and declares quarterly dividend (MEI) 10.20 +0.19 : Co announced that Mr. Batts decided not to stand for the position of chairman of the board but will remain a director. The Company's board of directors has named Mr. Aspatore as the new chairman of the board effective immediately. Methode's board of directors has declared a quarterly dividend of $0.07 per share to be paid on October 26, 2012, to common stockholders of record at the close of business on October 12, 2012.

11:22AM NXP Semi narrows Q3 guidance at Analyst Day (NXPI) 25.44 +0.43 : As mentioned at 11:16, NXPI issued in-line guidance for Q3 (Sep), co narrowed EPS to $0.53-0.59, excluding non-recurring items, from $0.50-0.62 vs. $0.54 Capital IQ Consensus Estimate; narrowed Q3 (Sep) rev growth to +6-8% QoQ to ~$1.16-1.18 bln (from +4-10%) vs. $1.17 bln Capital IQ Consensus Estimate.

NVIDIA (NVDA) introduced two new high-performance GPUs, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 and GeForce GTX 650.

2:03AM ASML issues shares in connection with Customer Co-Investment Program (ASML) 55.62 : Co announces that it has issued the shares for two of the three participating customers in its Customer Co-Investment Program, issuing a total of 75,573,452 shares to two Dutch Foundations established for this purpose. ASML issued 62,977,877 shares to the Foundation established for Intel (INTC), whose Foundation issued a corresponding number of depositary receipts to Intel. ASML issued 12,595,575 shares to the Foundation established for Samsung (SSNLF) whose Foundation issued a corresponding number of depositary receipts to Samsung. The shares are subject to a shareholders agreement, which, among other things, provides that these shares may not be voted other than in exceptional circumstances. The share issues resulted in aggregate proceeds of EUR 3,016 million. The shares for TSMC (TSM), the other participant in the Co-Investment Program, are expected to be issued at the end of October 2012.

1:10AM Verizon to offer iPhone 5 on its 4G LTE Network on Sep 21; pre-order sales begin on Sep 14 (VZ) 44.89 : Verizon Wireless announces it will offer Apple's (AAPL) iPhone 5 on its 4G LTE network beginning Fri., Sep 21 at 8am EDT. Customers will be able to pre-order iPhone 5 online beginning Fri, Sep 14 at 3am EDT online. iPhone 5 will be available starting at $199.99 for the 16 GB model, $299.99 for the 32 GB model and $399.99 for the 64 GB model with a new two-year customer agreement.

Sterne Agee lowers their Intel (INTC $23.01 -0.18) target to $22 from $24. The firm believes while July-August PC builds were weaker with a pause ahead of Win8 and weak BRIC demand, high Win8 platform ASPs + consumer training for new Win8 interface are driving more DecQ caution. The firm's checks with Taiwan ODMs indicate DecQ NB builds should improve 7-10% q/q, modest given a flat SepQ, but they believe an already high INTC in-house inventory and high PC retail chain inventory might be a drag on DecQ builds.

Openheimer notes September marks Qualcomm's (QCOM $62.64 +0.20) fiscal year-end, which means new annual guidance. Firm believes mgmt's first take on FY13 could set the mid-point of guidance slightly below current consensus, while calling out only small improvements to QCT margins. However, firm expects mgmt's tone to be mostly positive highlighting new areas of growth (tablets, small cell, etc.) suggesting room for upside. It's positive on Qualcomm's fundamental position and believe it is well positioned for share gains driven by AAPL and China growth and as it capitalizes on pent-up 4G LTE demand and smartphone expansion.