Still More New Highs
This is becoming a trend.
The auguries ahead of what could very well be the most anticipated earnings announcement of the post-pandemic era are all good.The S&P 500 closed Tuesday at another new all-time high, the 24th time the index has set a new high in 2024.
As Charlie Bilello of Creative Planning notes, over the last 12 years the S&P 500 has set 371 new highs, more than in any other 12-year period in its history.
“In the absence of a significant weakening in the labor market,” Waller said in a speech at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, “I need to see several more months of good inflation data before I would be comfortable supporting an easing in the stance of monetary policy.”
Later, Waller told a CNBC audience that “if the data were to continue softening throughout the next three to five months, you can even think about doing it at the end of this year.”
Waller has been among the more hawkish policymakers, emphasizing in other recent public remarks the potential need to hold the Fed’s benchmark interest rate “higher for longer” to ensure inflation is trending toward the 2 percent long-term target.
He also said on Tuesday that the Fed isn’t “seeing anything right now that looks like staying here for three or four months is going to cause the economy to go off a cliff” and that further rate increases are “probably unnecessary.”
And that’s pretty good.
We’ll hear more from policymakers this afternoon at 2:00 p.m. ET with the release of the minutes from the April 30-May 1 Federal Open Market Committee meeting.
Expect a hawkish general tone, like Waller’s. Consider too that the most recent FOMC meeting occurred before the release of softer April jobs data and cooler April inflation data.
