On today’s episode of the Zacks Friday Finish Line podcast, Content Writer Ryan McQueeney and Editor Maddy Johnson take on this week’s biggest story: the latest Federal Reserve interest rate hike.

The hosts kicked off the show with another look at oil prices. Oil hit $54 a barrel for the first time in over a year and a half on Monday as investors reacted to the news that several non-OPEC nations, including Russia, will be joining the cartel in cutting their production.

Find out more here: Here's Why Oil Prices Are Soaring

Maddy and Ryan also talked about President-elect Donald Trump’s technology summit, which featured appearances from executives from Apple (AAPL), Alphabet (GOOGL), Facebook (FB), Microsoft (MSFT), Amazon (AMZN), and many more industry leaders.

Check out more about the meeting: Tech and Trump: Can They Find Common Ground in New York?

Finally, the hosts talked about the Federal Reserve’s decision to raise interest rates again this week. On Wednesday, the Fed announced that it is raising the benchmark interest rate by a quarter percentage point higher, from the current range of 0.25% to 0.50% to the range of 0.50% to 0.75%.

Maddy and Ryan talked about what the rate hike means for the state of the economy, and the hosts also welcomed Kirk Du Plessis, the founder of Option Alpha, to discuss the performance of the stock market both before and after previous rate hike cycles.

Here’s our full coverage on rate hikes: Federal Reserve Raises Interest Rates to Between 0.50%-0.75% & How Do Fed Interest Rate Hikes Affect Stock Performance?

As always, thanks for checking out this week’s episode of the Zacks Friday Finish Line, and make sure to check back next week for even more news from the investment and financial world!

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