It’s time to stop waiting for the Fed: Morning Brief

By Stock News On Mar 15, 2024 1 0

This is The Takeaway from today’s Morning Brief, which you can sign up to receive in your inbox every morning along with:

Wall Street has stopped waiting for the Fed. And investors should too.

In the months spent waiting for an inflation comedown, and then for the central bank to take the last step — cementing a soft landing with a rate cut — the market has pressed on.

Thursday’s latest evidence of stubborn price pressures reinforced the view that the first rate cut won’t arrive until the summer.

What investors considered March’s all-but-promised interest rate cut became June’s. And now, at least according to traders putting their money where their mouths are, a cut in July is almost as likely.

So far this year, economic data has vacillated between hot and cold from release to release, rendering a coherent narrative about the direction of inflation, consumer health, and GDP all but impossible. There is little to do but wait and see. And then wait and see again.

While officials are busy parsing new reams of data — often contradictory and on a lag — market players are forced to divine what comes next and to fill the information void with their own narratives.

For the central bank’s critics, who are often just hungry for the market adrenaline of lower rates, a cautious approach to policy setting looks like paralysis, even though the officials are fulfilling their mandates. But an array of developments amid the rate cut wobbling highlights the limits of the Fed’s influence and the market-moving power of other economic factors.

Earnings expectations have lifted tech companies skyward, even as a new paradigm of less forgiving, higher rates reshuffled the landscape.

The market clamor isn’t just the wind-up sound of the AI hype machine. Another tech story that’s unfolded is the move towards efficiency and a focus on profits over prospects for growth, shedding some of the market’s fanciful excesses. Discipline, which may even have been learned through higher rates.

A surge beyond the “Magnificent Seven” (which is really the Magnificent Four) shows the strength of a broadening rally — with the Materials (XLB) and Financials (XLF) sectors joining the party of record highs usually reserved for the trillion-dollar elites. The recent success stories of Costco (COST) and Eli Lilly (LLY) can’t be ignored either.

Of course, the recent market frenzy could be seen as a reaction to an eventual rate cut, forever priced in no matter how delayed it may be. Like the United captain saying that, sorry, there’s another 30-minute delay before takeoff, waiting for just one more Fed meeting feels bearable — and keeps the hope of a cut at the top of the market’s collective mind.

But other themes showcase the Fed’s inability to penetrate economic problems, no matter how long a tightening cycle lasts. Mortgage rates are expected to climb down, but the lack of housing presents a long-term issue, as Fed Chair Powell told Congress last week. Waiting for the Fed may yield better rates, but they probably need to build more for better prices.

Almost no one expects a rate change on Wednesday, at the end of the Fed’s policy meeting. More parsing and hedging will be on display, along with another invitation to wait. The release of new interest rate forecasts will unleash a fresh wave of speculation and a point of contrast for how much more dovish or hawkish officials have become.

But staring at dots can only reveal so much.