Here come the Fed minutes ...
As expected, the Federal Open Market Committee left its benchmark interest rate unchanged, and markets anticipate that it would hike again at the June meeting. CME's FedWatch Tool reflects an 83.1% probability that the FOMC would increase the rate to a 1%-1.25% range.
This year, equal attention is being paid to another part of the Fed's normalization process after years of zero interest rates: paring down its $4.5 trillion balance sheet.
That's one thing markets will be parsing the minutes for; the prior one said the Fed plans to change its reinvestment policy this year. On Tuesday, Philadelphia Fed President Patrick Harker said in New York that the Fed intends to be "as boring as possible." That means it wants to be quite slow and calculated so that market participants are not spooked at any stage.
The statement after its May meeting indicated that the FOMC thought that economic weakness in the first quarter was transitory. Weak consumer spending slowed growth, and the reasons economists have cited for that include delayed tax refunds and a tendency for first-quarter growth to undershoot the rest of the year.
- RBI Governor Das discusses ways to scale up UPI ecosystem with stakeholders
- People find ChatGPT to have a better moral compass than real humans, study reveals
- TVS Motor Company net profit rises 15% to ₹387 crore in March quarter
- Canara Bank Q4 profit rises 18% to ₹3,757 crore
- Indegene IPO allotment – How to check allotment, GMP, listing date and more