treasury yields remained lower on wednesday after federal reserve policy makers delivered a widely expected quarter percentage point interest rate hike that pushed its policy rate above 5 and left the door open for additional action if needed as widely expected federal reserve policy makers delivered another 25basispoint rate hike lifting their main policy rate target to between 5 and 525 in addition policy makers said they remain highly attentive to inflation risks the us banking system is sound and resilientofficials will determine the extent to which additional policy firming may be appropriate after accounting for the cumulative tightening of monetary policy the lags with which monetary policy affects economic activity and inflation and economic and financial developmentsattention now turns to fed chair jay powell who will hold a press conference at 230 pm eastern time policy makers latest decision comes as the central banks 500 basis points of rate hikes since march 2022 is causing problems in the us regionalbanking sector after wednesdays decision fed funds futures priced in an 79 probability that policy makers will pause or make no change at their june meeting and they see a 13 chance of another quarterpoint hike next month according to the cme fedwatch tool by yearend the central bank is mostly expected to cut its fed funds rate target down to between 425 and 45 or even lower according to 30day fed funds futures in us economic data released earlier on wednesday data from payroll processor adp showed that us private sector employment jumped by 296000 jobs in april above the 133000 gain expected by economists polled by the wall street journal the final reading of the sp us services purchasing managers index came in at 536 for april versus an initial reading of 537 and the ism services index inched up to 519 in april from 512 in march a sign that most us businesses grew at a slightly faster pace last month what analysts are saying going into this meeting we assumed there would be a pause going forward and we got what we were looking for said collin martin a new yorkbased fixed income strategist for the schwab center for financial research when you take it into account all the new language in the statement the statement supports the case that officials want to see the cumulative impact of tightening before deciding if additional tightening is appropriate martin said via phone this content was created by marketwatch which is operated by dow jones  co marketwatch is published independently from dow jones newswires and the wall street journal