It didn't take long after today's dismal jobs report to spark what Wall Street hopes will be a Fed panic. Indeed, just moments after a catastrophic jobs report which "nobody' could have possibly predicted, well some notable exceptions, some of the biggest Wall Street analysts are already tearing up the soft landing playbook they were all pitching just, well, 24 hours ago and are urging the Fed to not just cut but panic while it's doing it.
We start with Goldman which begins by commenting on today's jobs report, and says that "the softening in labor market conditions has now gone beyond the amount that was welcome." As a result, Goldman now expects "an initial string of consecutive 25bp rate cuts in September, November, and December (vs. our previous forecast of cuts every other meeting)" or in other words 3 cuts in 2024 instead of just 2. While Goldman's chief economist Hatzius, who for much of the past year was banging the table on just how strong the economy is (and has just flipflopped) notes that "the slowdown in job growth in the July report likely overstates the decline in the underlying trend, if the August employment report is also weak and confirms the slowdown in job growth, then a 50bp cut would become likely at the September meeting."
But if Goldman's 3 rate cuts is notable, then JPM's new call for consecutive 50bps cuts is downright remarkable: that's right, JPM chief economist Michael Feroli, also a huge bull until, well apparently this morning, decided to upstage Goldman and went a step further, predicting rate cuts in September and November, and not just any rate cuts but double, or 50bps, followed by quarter-point reductions at every subsequent meeting. And the punchline: Feroli parroted what we said earlier...
Fed now forced to cut and there is little chance it will wait 2 months. How soon until the emergency meeting. VIX 30 and we get one next week
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 2, 2024
... and said there’s “a strong case to act” before the next meeting on Sept. 18. Fed Chair Jerome Powell may not “want to add more noise to what has already been an event-filled summer,” however, he wrote. But if the Fed does want to panic, so be it.
Moving on to Citi economists, who were already among the most aggressive in calling for the Fed to cut interest rates this year, said they expect half-point rate cuts in September and November and a quarter-point cut in December, having previously predicted quarter-point cuts at all three meetings. The Fed will then reduce rates by a quarter point at each meeting until mid-2025, bringing the policy band to 3%-3.25%, Veronica Clark and Andrew Hollenhorst predicted.
Finally, Bank of America's chief economist Michael Gapen, who’d been a holdout for rate cuts beginning in December, said he is also now looking for the first move in September.
The good news is that none of the above matters: like faithful windsocks, all of the so-called strategists above are useless and merely chase momentum. The question is what the market thinks will happen, and as the chart below shows, interest-rate swaps show that traders see a more-than-70% chance of half-point move in September, and are pricing in a total of about 115 basis points of reductions by year-end...
... expecting, or rather pushing risk off so far that the Fed has no choice but to panic.
