The Federal Reserve released minutes from a September meeting where officials agreed another rate hike was definitely coming but refused to say when. This is the equivalent of your doctor telling you that you need surgery at some point but he'll let you know the day of.
Market participants spent Wednesday analyzing 47 pages of bureaucratic hedging for clues about future monetary policy. They found none. The minutes contained more qualifiers than a Greg Maddux fastball and about as much velocity.
Fed officials see inflation. They see employment data. They see economic indicators that suggest conflicting actions. What they don't see, apparently, is a f*cking calendar.
Retail traders immediately began pricing in rate hikes for every month between now and the heat death of the universe. Trading volumes spiked as people who cannot define basis points rushed to position themselves ahead of an event with no scheduled date. Your neighbor Kevin bought inverse ETFs. He does not know what inverse means.
The technical setup remains unchanged regardless of what these people decide. Support holds or it doesn't. Resistance breaks or it doesn't. Whether Jerome Powell raises rates in October or December has exactly zero bearing on whether the 50-day moving average crosses the 200-day moving average. Chart patterns do not read Fed minutes.
The best part is they released this on a Wednesday. Not before the meeting. Not during the meeting. Three weeks after the meeting ended. By the time you read what they were thinking on September 16th, they've already had seven new thoughts and changed their minds four times.
The market will do what it was going to do anyway, and seventeen people in suits will take credit for either preventing or causing it.
Photo by Cameron J. on Unsplash
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