While investors know Fed wants inflation "deader than dead", metric is not entirely clear. While not singular, Volcker finally ended "war" when 3M annualized CPI fell to 2.5%

After many conversations with clients since the Sept FOMC (9/21), our overarching takeaways are the following:

  • Fed sole focus is quashing inflation and
  • In a way to make sure inflation is "deader than dead"
  • How this is measured is not entirely clear
  • Investors have lost faith in economists' models/projections on inflation
  • Fed similarly has little confidence in models and wants to see "tangible results"
  • Because of known and variable lags, plus market impatience
  • This is read to mean Fed will push US into a recession
  • Hence, risk assets sell off and yield curves invert

There are "greenshoots"

Stocks have been caught in a painful downtrend for most of 2022 as the Fed is fighting the war on inflation. But we think there are other paths to beating inflation beyond creating a deep recession (which Fed is willing to move towards). In this commentary, we highlight a few perspectives:

While markets viewed Fed commentary as drastically more hawkish, Fed funds futures only increased by a single hike for 2023. Granted, this could worsen if inflation data worsens, the key is that inflation trends remains the primary driverOne of his more notable comments (Powell) is the lack of progress on 3M, 6M and 12M inflationWe looked at the 1970-1982 battle on inflation, and an interesting...

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