“What I find interesting is that financial markets, which know darn well what’s going on here, are really not pricing in anything unusual for the rest of the year,” he said. “In the US financial markets, they’ve got just a little bit less than two rate cuts built into the market forecast through the rest of this year, with most of it starting around the June meeting and then another one in the second half of the year at some point.
“That’s not exactly a radical forecast. So despite all the noise around the Fed, the market’s still pretty comfortable that nothing really unusual is going to transpire for US interest rates this year, because I think the view is that the governance structures there will not allow a new Fed chair to just rule the roost and do whatever they want.”
The Fed chair is just one of 12 decisionmakers on the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), which votes on rate policy at eight scheduled meetings each year.
Two FOMC members voted for a rate cut in last week’s decision – but 10 favoured a hold, meaning supporters of a 25-basis-point reduction were comfortably outnumbered.
“There are 12 voters on the FOMC. And precious few of them turn over in any given year,” Porter said. “So even though there’s a lot of noise around the Fed, the market’s view – and I think, most forecasters’ view – is not a lot is really going to happen in terms of what really goes on with US interest rates.”