Which S&P 500 Stocks Move the Most on Fed Days?

On Federal Reserve decision days from July 2016 to Oct 28, 2026, real estate stocks and banks moved the most relative to their own normal days, while consumer staples, utilities and a group of defence and drug makers moved least. Across all 478 ranked S&P 500 members, the median stock’s average move on the 84 decision days was 1.45% either way, against 1.24% on all other days; the median of each stock’s own Fed‑day/normal‑day ratio was 1.17× (the three figures are separate medians). That is Exent’s count on dividend‑adjusted daily closes, with each company’s own earnings days taken out.

“Moving the most” has two meanings, and they give different lists. In raw size, the biggest Fed‑day movers were simply the most volatile stocks: Carvana averaged 5.13% and Bloom Energy 4.25% on decision days, but their average move on other days was also large (3.76% and 4.04%). This page ranks stocks by sensitivity: how much bigger a stock’s Fed‑day moves were than its own normal moves. A sensitivity of 1.50× means its decision‑day moves averaged half again its usual size. For the index itself, see what the stock market does on Fed days.

Real estate was the most Fed‑sensitive sector (median 1.32×), followed by financial services (1.20×) and consumer cyclicals (1.19×); consumer defensive stocks were the least (1.10×), with utilities and healthcare at 1.13×. REITs borrow heavily and are valued like long bonds, and bank earnings depend on the gap between short and long rates, so their reaction to rate news is not surprising. Utilities are the exception to the usual story: they are often called rate‑sensitive, and over months they can be, but their decision‑day moves were small and close to normal. The longer‑run sector pattern after cuts is in which sectors do well when rates fall.

All values are sector medians of the per‑stock figures, earnings days removed. Three ranked members without a sector label are left out of this table. Without the March 2020 emergency days, every sector’s sensitivity falls to between 0.97× and 1.11×, and real estate stays on top.

The stocks whose decision‑day moves were largest relative to their own normal days were mostly REITs and regional banks. Every one of the 15 still moved more than normal on Fed days with March 2020 removed, though the order changes, so the result is not only the March 2020 emergency cuts. Up‑day shares are mostly below half: high sensitivity says how big the moves were, not which way they went.

“Fed days” is the number of decision days counted for the stock after its own earnings days were removed (84 is the maximum; stocks listed after 2016, or whose reports often fell on Fed days, have fewer; the 60‑day cut‑off is applied before earnings days are removed). With 55 to 84 days per stock, small samples and shared event dates limit how precise any one ranking is; a difference of a few hundredths between two names should not be read as meaningful. Individual pages such as U.S. Bancorp and Broadcom have each stock’s volatility and drawdowns.

About 33 of the 478 ranked members (6.9%) moved less on Fed decision days than on their normal days. The ten lowest were led by Best Buy (0.84×), Kimberly‑Clark (0.87×) and Merck (0.89×). The list mixes defence contractors, drug makers and household staples, plus two of the market’s most volatile names, Tesla and AMD, whose own news usually outweighs a rate decision.

Low sensitivity is not the same as low risk. Tesla still averaged a 2.28% move on decision days; it simply moves that much anyway. How a stock’s overall swings compare with the market’s is its beta, a different measure from this one.

Many companies report earnings in the same weeks the Fed meets, so a naive count credits the Fed with earnings reactions. Fed meetings fall in late January, April, July and October, the busiest weeks of earnings season, and across the ranked members 3,142 stock‑days were both a Fed day and an earnings‑reaction day. Counted without removing them, Garmin and ADP topped the list and C.H. Robinson was in the top six; with their own report days removed, they look ordinary.

An earnings‑reaction day here is the report date and the next trading day, which covers both before‑the‑open and after‑the‑close reports. The rule removes the same kind of day from the normal‑day side too, so the comparison stays fair. The size of the typical earnings move is in how stocks move after earnings.

On Oct 28, 2026 the Fed held its target range at 3.75–4.00% (Federal Reserve statement), and the typical S&P 500 stock barely moved: the median member closed −0.04%, with 248 up and 252 down, while SPY rose 0.34% and the long‑Treasury fund TLT fell 0.78%. Eight of the ten biggest moves overlapped earnings windows; this calculation does not establish their causes. 93 members had report dates on Oct 27–28 (release times not checked), including 8 of the 10 biggest movers; without them, the median was −0.03%.

A day when the index rises but the median stock does not usually means the gains came from a handful of large companies. The next scheduled decision is on Dec 9, 2026 (FOMC calendar); this page is refreshed after each one.

It shows where a portfolio’s rate‑news risk is concentrated, not which way the next decision will push it. History says Fed days were somewhat bigger than normal days for most stocks and much bigger in a crisis, with no reliable direction. Checks investors often use (education, not advice):

How to measure a whole portfolio’s exposure to rates is in portfolio rate sensitivity; when the market’s most volatile stocks have historically paid off is in when to own high‑beta stocks.

The sample is the current S&P 500 list as of Oct 20, 2026, with second share classes dropped so each company appears once (500 companies). Exent’s price data gives dividend‑adjusted daily closes from Jul 1, 2016 to Oct 28, 2026. Fed days are the 84 FOMC decision days in that window, taken from the Fed’s meeting calendars and rate‑change table, including the emergency cut of Mar 3, 2020 and the Sunday cut of Mar 15, 2020, counted on Monday Mar 16. A move is the close‑to‑close return on the day, so it includes the hours before the 2:00 p.m. announcement. Sensitivity is a stock’s average absolute Fed‑day move divided by its average absolute move on all other trading days. Each company’s earnings‑reaction days are removed from both sides. Only stocks with at least 60 Fed decision days of price history (478) are ranked; sector figures are medians of those stocks.

Survivorship. Only today’s members are included; companies that were in the index during the period but have since left it are not. Results describe how these stocks behaved on past decision days and are not a forecast for any future meeting or stock.