• Very very simple day
• markets were anxious that Fed might hint at June hike
• Fed did NOT hint at June hike
• Markets were happy
• The end

I will now set about the task of stretching the bullet points above into enough prose that those of you who like reading will have something to do for the next few minutes.  Otherwise, you've already seen the thesis.  

Markets were more anxious than the Fed announcement ended up justifying.  It's that simple.  It's hard to forget just how flagrantly the Fed alluded to the December rate hike with the October verbiage changes.  It wasn't unfair to wonder if they'd pull a similar stunt this time around.  After all, they say they're on pace for 2 rate hikes in 2016, and they're running out of 'on-cycle' meetings to facilitate that (only June, September, and December remain).

The announcement itself contained no such hints, but it threw a few curveballs at first.  The Fed removed some verbiage regarding the level of risk surrounding global financial markets.  Even though they kept the part about "continuing to monitor" global financial developments, some saw this as a sign that their previous barrier to hiking had now been lowered.

Why not just hike today then?  That's a fair question and the Announcement never really answered it, except perhaps in saying that the economy and inflation had cooled off a bit in their opening paragraph.  That leaves us to conclude that the Fed is just a bit more dovish than the average market participant thought.  Dovish Fed = cheaper money = good for all the asset classes we typically follow.  As such, stocks, bonds, and oil all improved after the announcement.