Fed Minutes To Offer Insight into Yellen’s FOMC Comments

The minutes from the Federal Reserve’s March 18-19 meeting are set to be released on Wednesday, and they could be quite constructive for investors struggling to forecast the Fed’s next move.

The minutes “always move the market,” said Jeff Kilburg of KKM Financial. “Because at the end of the day, the Fed is still in complete control of the S&P 500.”

While most expect the Fed to continue to shave $10 billion off of its monthly quantitative easing program at each meeting, the open question relates to the Fed’s ultralow target on the federal funds rate. Many were surprised when, in her March 19 post-statement news conference, Fed Chair Janet Yellen said the first rise in the target for the key institutional lending rate could come six months after the Fed wraps up QE.

Some reassurance came on Monday, when Yellen said the Fed’s “extraordinary commitment” to improving the labor market “is still needed and will be for some time, and I believe that this view is widely held by my fellow policymakers at the Fed.”

What remains unclear is whether this was Yellen’s way of walking back her now-infamous “six month” comment. But given that the minutes will provide a record of the thoughts presented at the very meeting that Yellen’s press conference followed, the document could help investors figure out how seriously this timeline should be taken.

via CNBC

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