Wall Street Reacts To Powell Unleashing His Inner Dove

Ahead of today's FOMC statement and Powell presser, we said that the bogey for a dovish interpretation today will come not from the Fed's rate decision, which we knew would be unchanged, but the QT tapering decision...

... and sure enough, the fact that the Fed announced an accelerated QT tapering and it was bigger than expected ($35BN vs $30BN) is why the market is viewing the Fed announcement as dovish and futures are now soaring.

And while we wait for Powell's presser to conclude, here are some other hot takes from Wall Street strategists and thinkers:

David Russell, head of market strategy at TradeStation

“The Fed is still in wait-and-see mode before they get dovish. But the data hasn’t been cooperating. This statement keeps investors data dependent and focused on April numbers like CPI two weeks from now.”  

Audrey Childe-Freeman, chief G-10 FX strategist at Bloomberg Intelligence

“A first glance at the statement brings dollar bears some breathing space as the language adjustment is not as hawkish as may have been feared, though the reference about underwhelming inflation progress entertains a potential new layer of hawkishness at a later stage that could contain dollar downside ahead of the press conference. Muted dollar reaction so far captures this well.

“The language embraced thus far does not signal that the narrative has shifted back to new rate-hike debates, but rather to pushing back the timing on a rate cut. This is probably good enough for near-term euro-dollar relief given the feared hawkish pivot.”

Brian Coulton, chief economist at Fitch Ratings

“With unemployment still low and the labor market still tight, there is only a limited risk to the Fed’s employment mandate from waiting longer before embarking on rate cuts. On the other hand the risk of failing to get inflation down on a sustained basis seems to be rising as each week goes by. Patience is the watchword now for the Fed and the risk of fewer or no rate cuts this year is growing.”

Erica Adelberg, Bloomberg Intelligence’s mortgage-backed securities strategist:

“Making it explicit that any surplus MBS paydowns will be reinvested into Treasuries could adversely affect the MBS/Treasury basis, but at this point MBS paydowns are projected to be about half of the $35 monthly cap on average for the foreseeable future. The average loan rate backing the Fed’s MBS holdings is more than 300 bps below current mortgage rates, so it would take a significant interest rate rally to hit the MBS cap.”

Kathy Bostjancic, Chief Economist at Nationwide:

“We expect Chairman Powell will underscore this hawkish pivot in his press conference and emphasize that the timing of pace of rate cuts will depend highly on the future path of inflation. He likely will indicate the Fed is on an extended pause until inflation resumes its disinflationary trend.”

Ira Jersey, Bloomberg rates strategist:

“His lack of comment about the possibility of a hike is interesting, and I’d be surprised if he’s not asked about the potential for hikes in the press conference. But it seems that ‘on hold’ is his base case for now.”

Bloomberg Economics’ Anna Wong and Stuart Paul:

“For anyone wondering if this year’s hot inflation readings were just a blip, the May 1 FOMC meeting offered a clear answer: Hawkish tweaks to the statement show policymakers have lost confidence that inflation is moving in the right direction. At the same time, the Fed announced it would start tapering its balance-sheet run off in June – a month earlier than we expected — and will reduce the runoff cap by a bit more than we foresaw. That initially comes across as dovish, but the motivation here is key. If it turns out the Fed wants the run-off process to last longer — ultimately boosting the chance that its balance sheet will return to pre-pandemic size – that actually would be hawkish.”

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