Today is Fed day
Today is Fed day
Untitled DocumentToday is Fed day
The two-day Federal Open Market Committee meeting ends today, culminating in an announcement at 2:15 p.m. Eastern. Look for an interest rate cut of one-quarter percentage point and some softer language in the first paragraph of the accompanying statement to convey a “wait-and-see” approach to further Fed meetings.
The first look at Gross Domestic Product, or GDP as its called by economists and anyone that doesn’t want to type out the full name in his or her blog, was released this morning. As measured by GDP, the economy eked out a gain of 0.6 percent in after-inflation terms during the first quarter. This is the same rate that was posted in the fourth quarter, and although it will be revised twice more in the coming months, gives the Fed sufficient leeway to make a smaller quarter-point cut at this meeting and adopt a somewhat softer stance with regard to further interest rate cuts.
There is a bevy of economic data to follow the Fed the remainder of this week. March personal income, personal spending and core PCE inflation (the Fed’s favorite) will be released tomorrow and the employment report for April comes Friday morning.
Check back to Bankrate.com this afternoon following the Fed announcement for the very latest.