The financial markets will get another look at the Federal Reserve’s minutes of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) on Thursday. While the minutes are reported three weeks after the meeting, and while some of us feel these are just an after-the-fact opportunity for clarification, the markets are still eager to learn when that eventual rate hike is finally going to land.
There is almost no doubt that Fed Chair Janet Yellen and the FOMC members had to feel lousy that the financial markets tanked after the Fed announced no rate hike and no rate hike on the immediate horizon. Imagine that the markets say “we now really hate the free money policy.”
Yellen quickly changed her tune after the FOMC voted to keep rates steady. There was only one vote to hike on the FOMC. But then came more hawkish commentary from the Fed presidents.
What the market has to expect out of these minutes is at least some of the regional weakness to dominate the minutes. We just saw a dismal payrolls report. Regional manufacturing data has weakened handily, as has anything tied to commodities and energy. Inflation also remains under the Fed’s 2.0% to 2.5% target.
Again, the minutes are going to be from a meeting that was three weeks old (September 16 and 17). There was still more scare from China and Asia at that time, and it was even worse in the prior weeks and in August.
We looked at the prior minutes, and there almost have to be some changes expected for the September minutes. All of that is likely to lead to, yet again, a view that the Federal Reserve is being more dovish.
Just keep in mind that the last stance of Yellen was that conditions appear proper for a rate hike by the end of this year. That would imply a rate hike in December rather than October, and investment professionals need to understand that there is no FOMC meeting on the books for November.
For whatever this is worth, fed funds futures currently do not have a 100% pricing in of a fed funds rate hike to 0.25% until February of 2016. That is due to the slew of weaker economic data that has been seen in recent weeks.
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