So much for a March rate cut.
Fed Chair Jay Powell basically said as much in the press conference that followed the latest Fed meeting Wednesday:
“. . . with strong growth, strong labour market, inflation coming down, the committee intends to move carefully as we consider when to begin to dial back the restrictive stance that we have in place.
We’re going to be data dependent, we’re going to be looking at this meeting by meeting. Based on the meeting today, I would tell you that I don’t think it’s likely that the committee will reach a level of confidence by the March meeting to identify March as the time to do that. But that’s to be seen . . . when you ask me about the near term, I hear that as March . . . that’s probably not the most likely case, or what we would call the base case.”
Now markets are pushing out their pricing of rate cuts. Fed funds futures imply rates around 5.28 per cent at March’s meeting, within the current policy range of 5.25 to 5.5 per cent, according to CME data.