State Street: Merry Christmas from The Fed

02 mins 48 secs

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Jerome Powell delivered an early dose of Christmas cheer when the Federal Reserve held rates steady at the December FOMC meeting, penciling in three rate cuts for 2024. State Street senior multi-asset strategist Ben Luck discussed the implications and market reaction to the Fed pivot on Bloomberg Market's Asia. It was a very, very aggressive pivot. It basically hit all the spots that investors want it. Everybody at the beginning or the pre FOMC was hoping for this. It really came through because the earlier message throughout this year was rates in restrictive territory, financial conditions needs to be tighter. More importantly, rates needs to be higher for longer, but none of that really came through in terms of the summary of economic projections, which really came through with lower inflation forecast, but the same growth forecast that will look for both 2024 and 2025. That soft landing scenario came through. Then to your earlier point, Divan, the Fed rate cuts really came through, three in 2024 and three in 2025. The only thing that we're more worried about is now this is now becoming a very bold consensus view. We're not even in 2024 yet in terms of many of these year ahead pieces that a lot of strategists have put through at least over the last couple of weeks. They're going to be people saying these moves are just far too fast. The king is juicy momentum. That's crucial here. Well, I think the rate cuts have really been, at least the pricing overnight has been excessive. The one thing that we continue to see is that in terms of the US economy relative to the rest of the world, it continues to be much stronger. If we do anticipate a pivot, we didn't expect the Fed to be the first to pivot. We were actually calling for both the ECB and the Bank of England to actually pivot first, given that they're in a much more of a stagflation territory comparing to what the US looked like. But now with the green light that we're seeing from the Fed giving the signal to the rest of the world, then you are going to expect all these other G10 central banks to basically follow suit with their dovish comments. I think our previous analysis remains to be the same. We still expect that it's going to be more of a second half rate cut story, given that there isn't really much of a push right now, especially financial conditions remains to be moderate right now. So not a whole lot of change in terms of our views. We still expect the Fed to cut rates in the second half, but it's definitely a great Christmas present for everyone. 

Transcript

The risk-on rally resulting from the Fed’s dovish pivot was an early Christmas present, according to State Street Senior Multi Asset Strategist Ben Luk.

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