By Note The table above is updated before publication with the latest consensus forecasts. However, the text charts are prepared ahead of time. Therefore there can be discrepancies between the forecasts given in the table above and in the text charts.
Rates as of 0500 GMT
Market Recap
Whats the world coming to? I was all prepared to discuss in detail this morning last nights statement from the Federal Open Market Committee FOMC, Fed Chair Powells press conference, and what the Feds stance means for the market. But it didnt mean anything when compared to the activity of a gang of Reddit readers taking aim at Wall Street. Its the financial version of the storming of the US Capitol building, only in this case its not so easy to determine who are the good guys and who are the bad guys neither group seems particularly admirable.
In any case, first lets discuss the FOMC meeting and then we can talk about the stock market.
The FOMC meeting held no major surprises. The statement was little changed from December. I had thought they might be more optimistic about the longerterm, but in fact they downgraded both their view of the immediate future and further out. They added a bit to acknowledge that progress on vaccinations could change the course of the pandemic, but at the same time they eliminated some key qualifiers from the second paragraph that limited the time of concern its now openended. This is a significant downgrade in their view, IMHO. To wit
The path of the…
