In the coming week, U.S. investors would pay a very close attention on the preliminary PMIs readings, the FOMC meeting minutes, revised data on fourth quarter GDP, PCE data, existing home sales as well as personal income and spending.
On Wednesday the Federal Reserve is to publish the minutes of its January meeting, when it slowed the pace of interest rate hikes to 25 basis points after a year of aggressive hiking. The Fed’s meeting minutes on Wednesday will be the spotlight this week as uncertainty over how high interest rates may ultimately rise in the central bank’s battle against inflation has renewed.
The minutes may give investors some insight into the possibility for a larger hike at the upcoming Fed’s March meeting after recent comments from some policymakers indicated support for such a move, despite the Fed hiking a massive 450 basis points over the past 11 months.
The minutes are largely expected to reiterate the central bank’s hawkish stance, which repeatedly indicated more interest rate hikes are likely. This has prompted investors to re-evaluate expectations for how high the Fed will ultimately raise rates with the market widely expecting the federal funds rate to peak above 5.2% in July.
Persistently rising prices have pushed investors to factor in another 75 basis points of rate hikes by July. They have also lowered their bets for the first rate cut with swaps pointing to a 20 basis point reduction by the end of the year, in comparison to a 50 basis point cut seen few weeks ago.
Despite witnessing the most aggressive Fed tightening cycle in decades, U.S. retail sales at all-time highs, unemployment at 43-year lows, nonfarm payrolls ramping up in January and inflation reaccelerating.
The U.S. is to release the personal income and spending data on Friday, which contains the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge – the core personal consumption expenditures index (PCE), which will be closely monitored.
The readings will give more insight into price pressures, while earnings results from number of major retailers will cast some light on how consumers are faring in the current environment of still rising prices. Recent data has shown the decline in the annual rate of inflation has stalled while producer prices rose by the most in seven months in January.
The labour market ballooned in January with the U.S. economy adding an impressive 517K jobs, blowing past economic expectations. While at the same time, a slew of corporate layoff announcements triggered questions about whether there could be a broad slowdown on the horizon.
