Jerome Powell spoke today and some feared he would talk hawkish in order to hurt the stock market, because of the way it soared last week after Wednesday’s FOMC meeting. However, he did not talk hawkish. Instead, he used the word disinflation to describe the economic situation and said that he did not think the inflation rate would get near to 2% until 2024. This sets up a situation for the Federal Reserve to pause on its rate hikes after one or two more meetings and then do nothing for the rest of the year.
This isn’t really dovish policy either, it’s more that Powell is becoming scared to do much of anything and wants to stop, hoping things will turn out good. But, the fact that he is not hawkish is causing people to buy stocks and is the reason why gold and silver turned up first, back in December, before the US stock market did, and are likely to continue to outperform for the rest of the year.
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-Mike