Stock-market investors took the Federal Reserve’s decision Wednesday to begin tapering its monthly bond purchases without a hysteria, erasing early losses to see the Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500 index and Nasdaq Composite score a fourth consecutive round of record closes.

"In light of the substantial further progress the economy has made toward the Committee’s goals since last December, the Committee decided to begin reducing the monthly pace of its net asset purchases by $10 billion for Treasury securities and $5 billion for agency mortgage-backed securities," according to the FOMC statement.

“This taper was probably the best telegraphed or advertised move in monetary policy history,” said some Wall Street analysts. That’s in contrast to 2013, when the Fed’s signal that it planned to begin scaling back an earlier asset-buying program sparked a messy bond market selloff that sent ripples through other markets.