Federal Reserve Chairman Powell surprised investors and markets yesterday with a curiously dovish set of comments regarding goods disinflation and loosening financial conditions and, most importantly, the Chairman appeared to open the door for rate cuts prior to the end of 2023, a first during the most aggressive FOMC monetary policy tightening campaign in over forty years. While the Fed chief started his post-meeting comments by reiterating the need for ongoing rate increases and that inflation still remains too high, particularly in the sticky PCE core services (excluding housing rents) metric, which has run above 4% for the all but one of the past twenty months (4.96/3.93% high/low), the Chairman quickly ginned up investors by emphasizing his mounting optimism regarding the soft economic landing scenario and by being remarkably unconcerned about the sharp loosening of financial conditions to kick off the new year. Indeed, this is a marked reversal for the Chairman, who has previously been able to message the market down, followed promptly by a slew of Fed Governors hammering home the same message.
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