Post FOMC, Pre NFP – The Rest of the Week in the Futures Markets:
By Mark O’Brien, Senior Broker:
In meeting after meeting, Federal Reserve officials have been saying that the path to achieving their 2% inflation goal would be a bumpy one. For the first quarter of 2024, “there has been a lack of further progress toward the (Fed’s) two percent inflation objective,” according to the central bank’s statement following today’s conclusion of it most recent Federal Open Market Committee meeting.
As such, the Fed kept the federal funds rate target range at 5.25% to 5.5%, a 23-year high. This move – or the absence of one – was highly anticipated. Indeed, Fed watchers expect the central bank to hold rates steady through its next meeting in June – for the seventh consecutive time – and likely further on out. In one readers survey conducted by Seeking Alpha, over half the participants don’t see any rate cuts in 2024. Patience seems to be the order of the day as Fed Chair Jay Powell explained earlier this month: the current restrictive policy needs more time to work as the labor market remains strong and disinflationary dynamics have stalled.
The next economic mover and shaker up this week: the Labor Department’s April Non-Farm Payrolls Report, to be released Friday, 7:30 A.M., Central Time. The precursor to this came today in the form of the ADP employment report, which revealed that 192,000 private jobs were added in April, a slowdown from the 208,000 private jobs added the prior month. The latest reading came in higher than the expected 179,000 addition of new private jobs. The forecast for nonfarm payrolls is for 243,000 jobs to have been added.
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