The Federal Reserve spikes the markets' punch bowl
It is now a virtual certainty that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates at the end of this month. And liquidity-addicted markets do love easy money.
"There is something profoundly depressing about the market's obsession with US monetary policy," says Jonathan Allum in The Blah! newsletter. Nave souls might have thought that Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell's decision to "accentuate the negative" while giving testimony to Congress last week would spook markets.
Far from it. That's because his gloomy remarks about trade tensions and the global economy have left it a virtual certainty that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates at the end of this month, and liquidity-addicted markets love easier money. The news sent America's S&P 500 soaring above the 3,000 mark for the first time ever. The index is now up 20% so far this year. The Dow Jones Industrial Average index also breached 27,000.
This may herald the start of a new cycle of interest-rate cuts. Interest-rate futures show that traders think the Federal Reserve "could unravel all of last year's four rate increases by 2020", says Robin Wigglesworth in the Financial Times. If it fails to serve up the anticipated easing, many "will feel entitled to sue the central bank for breach of contract", says John Authers on Bloomberg.
Taking out insurance
Markets appear to have "browbeaten the central bank into a defensive posture", Richard Barwell of BNP Paribas Asset Manager told the paper. Trump's "barrages of tweet attacks" and repeated threats to fire Powell have also added to the pressure to ease policy and drive down the dollar, adds Irwin Stelzer in The Sunday Times. The complaints of politicians and markets seem to have prompted an overreaction. The Fed has never before made such a "pre-emptive move to stave off a slowdown while the economy's performance has been so close to its expectations", economist Joe Carson tells Barron's. The Federal Reserve once saw its job as being to take away "the punch bowl when the party gets going", says Forsyth. Now it prefers to spike the bowl at the first sign that the party is slowing down.