Market update: S&P 500 sets new record after Fed announcement

 US equities rose yesterday with the Dow Jones up 1.0% and the S&P 500 gaining 1.2% after the Federal Reserve announced that it would not yet begin to scale back its quantitative easing asset purchase programme. In stock news, Adobe Systems jumped 9.2% after the company announced that it expected subscriber growth to top the 331,000 that it added in the third quarter on strong demand from corporate customers. Elsewhere, shares in FedEx rose 5% after the company posted a bigger quarterly profit as the courier company cut costs and its lower-priced ground shipping business performed well.

European equities have opened higher this morning with the FTSE 100 up 1.4% and the FTSE Eurofirst 300 1.1% higher. Mining stocks performed strongly as gold prices surged 4% yesterday after the Fed decided the US economy was not strong enough yet for it to taper off its stimulus. Randgold Resources led the FTSE 100 with a gain of almost 10%. The world’s biggest silver miner Fresnillo was 7% higher while platinum miner Anglo American rose 4.6%.