The minutes from the FOMC (Federal Open Market Committee) meeting are scheduled to be released later today. The minutes are generally released to the public before the Thanksgiving holidays. Investors are on the lookout for the next phase of interest rate hikes.
Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell informed reporters after the committee’s meeting on November 1-2 that rates would likely have to rise more than the FOMC’s quarterly predictions from September had shown.
Karim Basta, the chief economist at III Capital Management, stated,
“If the topic of rates going higher than projected in September comes up, I’d be looking for how many support that.”
At each of its last four policy sessions, the Fed increased interest rates by three-quarters of a percentage point, which is triple the average amount. This aggressive campaign of monetary tightening was launched by the Fed earlier this year to curb high inflation.
Powell said in his news conference following the November meeting that the central bank would likely scale back to modest rate hikes as early as December, with the benchmark rate already around 4%.
The Nasdaq Composite lost approximately 1.6% last week and the S&P 500 dropped by 0.7% as central bankers declared in over a dozen speeches throughout the week that they planned to continue aggressive policy tightening. For the week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was essentially unchanged.
The US CPI (Consumer Price Index) numbers dropped to 7.7% in October, as opposed to 8.2% in the month before. Although the data indicated that price hikes slowed more quickly than anticipated in October, inflation remains higher by more than three times the Federal Reserve’s 2% target for price stability.
Investors will receive the most recent pictures of manufacturing and industrial activity this week from readings on durable goods orders and global PMI data, which are both on the economic calendar. The FOMC minutes will be published today, on Wednesday in Washington at 2:00 p.m