“Powell has a tough job ahead of him. The market is pricing in a 97% chance of a July rate cut, and a 75% chance of one in September.” says the Seven Report’s Tom Essaye. Click here to read the full MarketWatch article.
What’s in Today’s Report:
Futures are marginally higher thanks to continued momentum from yesterday’s dovish rally.
Economic data was sparse overnight as the only notable number was German CPI, which met expectations at 1.6% yoy.
Today will be a busy day. First, we get the 2nd half of Powell’s testimony in front of the Senate Banking Committee at 10:00 a.m. ET, but that shouldn’t yield any surprises as it’s mostly a repeat of yesterday.
The ECB Minutes will be released at 7:30 a.m. ET and if they hint at a re-start of QE (which they probably will) then we might see an extensions of this “dovish” rally.
On the data front, CPI (E: 0.0%) and Jobless Claims (E: 216K) both get released later this morning but given the flood of dovishness inundating markets right now from global central banks, it’d take a very strong CPI and very high jobless claims to hit stocks.
Finally, there are multiple Fed speakers today besides Powell, but they are all generally overshadowed by the comments yesterday so the market should largely ignore their speeches. Today’s roster includes: Williams (11:00 a.m., 1:30 p.m. ET), Quarles (1:30 p.m. ET), Kashkari (5:00 p.m. ET).
Tom Essaye quoted in MarketWatch on May 2nd 2019. After Powell’s news conference, investors were “left with a market lacking a material, positive catalyst at the moment and one at the top of reasonable valuations…” said Tom. Click here to read the full article.
Futures are slightly higher following a generally uneventful night as markets digested the Fed decision. Importantly, there was no major follow through to Wednesday’s late sell off.
Economic data didn’t contain any surprises as German Gfk Consumer Climate beat estimates (10.6 vs. (E) 10.4).
Today there are multiple economic reports including Durable Goods Orders (E: 2.2%), Final Q2 GDP (E: 4.3%), Jobless Claims (E: 216K) and Pending Home Sales (E: 0.0%) as well as two Fed speakers, Kaplan (2:00 p.m. ET), Powell (4:30 p.m. ET). But, Powell just spoke at length yesterday so he shouldn’t say anything too surprising. Meanwhile, unless we get a very disappointing Durable Goods report, the economic data shouldn’t move markets.
Instead, the Italian budget will be the most important event today, and if the budget deficit prints above 2.5%, that likely will weigh on the euro and boost the dollar, which could be a headwind for stocks.