While Wednesday may be a slow news day as investors and everyone else make final preparations for putting turkeys in the oven, for financial markets it is a big day as the Federal Reserve releases the minutes from the November Federal Open Markets Committee (FOMC) meeting.  As I have written before, the minutes act as a fact check on the Chair’s press conference held after each FOMC meeting.

The November meeting saw a toned down release from the Committee, but a hawkish Fed Chair.  However, at the press conference Chair Powell made clear there was no pause in the offing and that it was better to raise too much rather than not enough. He did say that a slower rate of increase could come at the December meeting.  The release of the minutes this week will tell Fed Watchers whether the meeting had a discussion if there was a willingness to lower the pattern of 75bps increases, which is my suspicion.  The minutes, in addition to official comments by the FOMC members, can give a good signal as to where the Fed is headed.

As Chair Powell has done a good job of telegraphing policy and while there has been a chorus of remarks indicating that a pause is not in the cards for the next meeting, there are several signals that the string of 75bps increases may have ...

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