The U.S. Federal Reserve yesterdayreleased the minutes of the June 11-12 Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) monetary policy meeting. The content shows that Fed officials are aware of signs that the U.S. economy is slowing down, but although inflation is heading in the right direction The direction is moving forward, but it is still not enough to start cutting interest rates. We need to wait for "more information" to gain confidence in cutting interest rates.
Officials participating in the meeting believed that monetary policy should be prepared to deal with unexpected economic weakness at any time, and also listed some economic data that can support the continued decline of inflation in the next year. These conditions include slowing wage growth, declining corporate pricing power, consumption Increased sensitivity to rising prices.
On the whole, it is the same position as Ball released earlier. Wall Street Journal reporter Nick Timiraos, who is known as the "Fed's mouthpiece", wrote an analysis that due to high inflation, Fed officials did not have enough confidence in cutting interest rates at the last meeting, and some policymakers advocated , should pay close attention to signs that the labor market may weaken sooner than expected.
Fed mouthpiece: September interest rate cut still possible
However, Nick Timiraos pointed out that the meeting minutes showed that officials were basically satisfied with their wait-and-see stance on interest rate changes, and combined with recent public conversations by Fed officials, this indicates that the door to a rate cut in September is still open.
After the meeting minutes were released, according to the CME Group's Fed Watch tool, the market expects the probability that the Fed will cut interest rates by 1% to between 5% and 5.25% in September, which has climbed from 61.5% yesterday to 68.4% today. , believes that the probability of keeping interest rates unchanged in September has dropped from 32.8% yesterday to 25.7% today.
U.S. stocks continue to rise and currency markets continue to fall
U.S. stocks were closed early for Independence Day on Wednesday. Major U.S. stock indexes mostly closed in the red. The S&P and Nasdaq hit new highs, continuing their recent gains:
- The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 23.85 points, or 0.06%, to close at 39308.00 points.
- The S&P rose 28.01 points, or 0.51%, to close at 5537.02 points.
- The Nasdaq index rose 159.54 points or 0.88% to close at 18188.30 points.
- The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index rose 106.73 points or 1.92% to close at 5651.72 points.
However, despite rising market expectations for an interest rate cut in September, the currency market continues to weaken. Bitcoin fell below US$58,000 this morning, falling as deep as US$57,800, setting a new low since the beginning of May. It is currently trading at US$58,818 in the past 24 hours. It fell 4.23%, Ethereum fell 4.92% to $3,216, and mainstream Altcoin also experienced declines ranging from 5% to 11%.
