Wednesday, March 22, 2023

Is the Fed's glass half full, or half empty?

Mid-week market update: Investors and traders have been waiting for the moment of the FOMC announcement and subsequent press conference. How does the Fed respond to the twin challenges of a banking crisi and inflation threat?

John Authers highlighted analysis from Bespoke indicating the market was entering a period of extreme volatility in Fed Funds futures.
The fluctuation of fed funds futures has been so extreme that, since their inception in 1994, the only other months to see such volatility were: January 2001 (when the Fed started to hike); September 2001, month of the 9/11 terrorist attacks; January and October in the crisis year of 2008; and March 2020, when Covid-19 arrived. This is according to an analysis by Bespoke Investment Group. In contrast to the Fed’s current tightening regime, all those months saw the central bank cutting rather than hiking in response to clear crisis conditions. Over the last month, the gap between the highest and lowest fed funds rates that have been predicted stands at 77.5 basis points:

 
The Fed has spoken, It raised rates by a quarter-point and the statement changed from it expects "ongoing increases" to "some additional policy firming may be appropriate in order to attain a stance of monetary policy that is sufficiently restrictive to return inflation to 2 percent over time",
 

The full post can be found here.


No comments: