Where next for US interest rates?

Last Friday’s US payrolls data fell short of expectations. So, what does that mean for interest rates, asks Andew Van Sickle.

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Last Friday's US payrolls data, one of the monthly American economic indicators markets keep an especially close eye on, fell short of expectations. Investors had anticipated around 200,000 new jobs in April, but only 160,000 materialised. Investors promptly marked down their interest-rate forecasts. Markets decided that a June hike is off the table, and interest-rate futures now imply only a 47% probability of any increase at all this year. In December last year, the Fed had pencilled in four rate hikes in 2016.

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Andrew Van Sickle
Editor, MoneyWeek

Andrew is the editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He grew up in Vienna and studied at the University of St Andrews, where he gained a first-class MA in geography & international relations.

After graduating he began to contribute to the foreign page of The Week and soon afterwards joined MoneyWeek at its inception in October 2000. He helped Merryn Somerset Webb establish it as Britain’s best-selling financial magazine, contributing to every section of the publication and specialising in macroeconomics and stockmarkets, before going part-time.

His freelance projects have included a 2009 relaunch of The Pharma Letter, where he covered corporate news and political developments in the German pharmaceuticals market for two years, and a multiyear stint as deputy editor of the Barclays account at Redwood, a marketing agency.

Andrew has been editing MoneyWeek since 2018, and continues to specialise in investment and news in German-speaking countries owing to his fluent command of the language.