John Williams’ grinching be damned, last week’s Fed pivot was a bona fide Christmas miracle. As mainFT’s Katie Martin wrote this weekend:
The only thing Jay Powell could have done to deliver a stronger impression of a festive giveaway to global markets this week would have been to conduct his press conference decked in an oversized red suit with fluffy white trimmings and a matching hat.
Bond yields plunged across the board, with the 10-year Treasury yield falling below 4 per cent for the first time since summer. The MSCI All-Country World Index jumped 2.6 per cent last week for its seventh consecutive week of gains — the longest streak in almost six years.
As JPMorgan’s Phoebe White wrote: “Christmas came early.” It has already forced Goldman Sachs’s David Kostin to raise his 2024 target for the S&P 500. However, if this is a proverbial Santa rally it looks more like the Billy Bob Thornton version than Edmund Gwenn.