Fed Funds Rate – Fountainheadinvesting

12/17/2024

A Hawkish Cut

As expected the Fed cut interest rates by 0.25% bringing the Fed Funds rate to 4.25% to 4.5% To be sure, this is a hawkish cut. The S&P 500 gave up its gains of 0.5% and has dropped 1.5% in a reversal as has the Nasdaq Composite, down a full 2% to 19,703.

The 10-year treasury yield has shot to 4.5%, a harbinger of how the markets believe that the Feds will have to pay more to finance the deficit, with analysts even talking of 5% – a rate seen last October.

The hawkishness stems from the FOMC Median 2025 PCE Inflation Forecast, which rises to 2.5% vs 2.1%

The median forecast of Fed policymakers for the benchmark rate for the end of next year is now 3.9%. That compares with 3.4% back in September. That suggests 50 basis points of easing compared with 100 basis points in September (including the impact of today’s rate cut).

Today’s cut means policymakers have now lowered their benchmark lending rate by a full percentage point since mid-September. The median estimate of Fed officials now sees just two cuts next year. Most folks were expecting three in the forecast.

Fed officials are tipping an unemployment rate of 4.3% next year a shade higher than the current 4.2%. Chair Powell in the conference that followed stressed that he wanted to ensure that labor markets didn’t get derailed when asked about the need to cut.

The Fed’s policy statement also alluded to a slower pace of cuts by saying “the extent and timing” of additional adjustments would depend on the outlook. This too was stressed in the conference that it would always be new data that would matter.

The neutral rate discussed (the rate at which the economy is neither inflationary nor disinflationary) is now 3%, higher than the original 2%, which the Feds were hoping to achieve by 2024, now highly unlikely before 2027.

Given the strength in the economy, with the GDP at 2.8% and projected to grow above 2% next year, a strong labor market with an unemployment rate of only 4.2%, this is not a bad call and regardless of how the market reacted, the caution to cut slower in 2025 is warranted in my opinion.

A rate cut could be on the table as soon as September, if inflation continues to progress toward the Federal Reserve’s 2% goal, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said at his post-monetary policy decision press conference.

In the labor market, supply and demand have come into better balance and have returned to about where they were before the pandemic — “strong, but not overheated,” he said.

Earlier today, the central bank’s Federal Open Market Committee kept its benchmark rate at 5.25%-5.50%, a level that it has stayed at since July of last year.

The second quarter’s data has strengthened confidence that inflation is heading sustainably toward the Fed’s 2% goal, he added. It’s waiting for additional data to further strengthen that confidence before the FOMC reduces the federal funds rate target range.

“We have made no decisions about future meetings, and that includes the September meeting,” he said.