The Federal Reserve’s new buzzword: Recalibrate
At Wednesday’s press conference after the Fed – finally – cut rates by 50 basis points (bp)(0.5%) – Fed Chair Powell introduced a new phrase to explain their action: “recalibrate.”
We have been through “transient inflation”; “data dependent”; “higher for longer”; and “data-dependent, not data point dependent” and have reached “recalibrate”.
Chair Powell denied that they were playing catch up because they waited too long to start cutting rates (they are, and they did).
Frankly, after their slow and deliberate approach this year, I expected only 25 bp. BUT…the next meeting is not until November 6, the day after the Election. And who knows what the environment will be on that date? It is certainly not out of the question that there will be a lack of clarity about the outcome. And while the Fed states that it not influenced by political considerations, they will naturally be aware of an environment which may well make it difficult for them to make an accurate forecast of the future.
So 50 bp now is “not a catch up” – but it would have been more consistent – and raised fewer questions – if they had cut 25 bp in July and a further 25 bp now.
Mortgage rates
I will update my 2023 article Why Mortgage Rates will fall in 2024 in the next few days. In that article I predicted that the 30-year Fixed Rate Mortgage (FRM) would drop below 6% by the end of 2024. I also explained why mortgage rates do not follow the Federal Reserve’s interest rate decisions, but are market driven based on the yield of the 10-year Treasury.
And to make to make that point more clearly: in both Massachusetts and Florida it is already possible to get FRMs for 5.5%, a sharp drop from from earlier in the year.
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Andrew.Oliver@Compass.com