Indexes rallied Thursday, with tech stocks leading the Nasdaq to rise 2.5% as investors continued to digest Wednesday's jumbo rate cut from the Fed.

The latest batch of quarterly forecasts from the Federal Reserve showed policy makers have had a change of heart since June about the pace of interest rate cuts in 2024. The latest iteration of the Fed's "dot plot" penciled in two more quarter-point cuts before the end of the year,

The decision by the Fed's policy-setting committee to cut interest rates for the first time since March 2020 was prefaced by an unusual amount of market uncertainty as to how much the central bank would lower its benchmark rate from a two-decade high of 5.25% to 5.5%, where it has stood since July 2023.