From the desk of Willie Delwiche.
We don’t get to choose the market environment.
Like it or not, the current one is heavily influenced by the Federal Reserve. And the Fed is not alone. Almost every central bank around the world is raising rates – and doing so as quickly as possible.
The Fed raised rates by another 75 basis points at yesterday’s FOMC meeting, bringing the year-to-date total to three percentage points of tightening. And they are not done yet. That was the message Chair Powell delivered and that was the message received, reluctantly at first, by the market.
The four previous times that the Fed raised rates this year, the S&P 500 was up sharply on the day of the announcement, with daily gains ranging from 1.5% to 3.0%. Without those gains, S&P 500 would be down close to 30% YTD (versus the actual 20% decline). That changed yesterday, as the S&P 500 closed down 1.7% (after being up on the day going into the FOMC announcement).