Here come the Fed minutes ...
Yuri Gripas/Reuters
The Federal Reserve at 2 p.m. ET will release the minutes of its most recent policy meeting.
At the January 30-31 meeting, which was the last under former Fed Chair Janet Yellen, the Federal Open Market Committee left interest rates unchanged, as expected. But its statement updated the language on inflation, indicating that the Fed expected prices "to move up this year."
Inflation has since been investors' focus. In early February, stocks plunged into a correction, pushed in part by a report that showed faster-than-expected wage growth. And last week, the consumer-price index for January increased by more than expected.
These events won't be captured in the Fed's minutes. Still, investors would be reading them for more information on how FOMC members were thinking about inflation, and how much they could raise interest rates to combat it.
The meeting took place after the Republican tax act was finalized, and so investors will also be reading for the impact of this fiscal stimulus on the Fed's forecasts for the economy.
FOMC member projections on the so-called dot plot in December showed that FOMC members expected they could raise interest rates three times this year. According to implied probabilities on Bloomberg, traders see a 100% chance that the first hike would come at the March 20-21 meeting, when Fed Chairman Jerome Powell holds his first press conference and new economic forecasts are released.
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