Boise (670 KBOI News) – Markets are way up after a comment Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell made to a group of economist today, signaling they may be close to finished bumping up interest rates.

Brian Wiley, host of Idaho’s Money Show on 670 KBOI, says the comment was sort of cryptic, so no one knows for sure what he meant.

“He said we are close, of just under, our target rate,” said Wiley.  “This could be a case of semantics, does ‘just below’ mean the target’s still 3%, and we’re at 2%, does he think that 1% is ‘just below’?  Or, we might just see a quarter-point increase in December, and that might be it.  They might be done.”

Wiley says the Fed is meeting on the 10th and 11th of December.

But regardless of what Powell meant, the markets liked it.  The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up 618 points.