Investors expect the Fed to weaken its monetary policy amid the inflation data

Yesterday, important data on inflation in the United States were published, showing a slowdown in consumer price growth in the country. After the release of statistics, investors began to expect that the Federal Reserve will reduce the size of the rate hike at a meeting in December.

In particular, US inflation fell to 7.7% in October, while analysts expected it to rise to 8%. At the same time, overall inflation last month reached a 40-year high of 8.2%. 

Fresh data managed to slightly change forecasts regarding the next rate hike by the US Federal Reserve. Now investors expect that at the meeting on December 13-14, the regulator will raise the rate by only 50 basis points. Prior to that, the Fed raised the federal funds rate by 75 bp at each of its last 4 meetings.

However, it is too early to talk about a reversal in the Fed's policy, since the central bank needs to make sure in the coming months that inflation continues to slow down, approaching the target level of 2%. And in order to bring inflation to this level, the Fed has already raised the base rate 6 times in 2022 to a range from 3.75% to 4%.