The Federal Reserve will fire its next salvo in the war against inflation on Wednesday afternoon. That is likely to include an interest-rate increase of 0.75 percentage points and a hawkish tone from Chairman Jerome Powell at his post-meeting press conference. Markets won’t get their much-anticipated all-clear signal from the Fed.
Futures markets are overwhelmingly pricing in a fed-funds rate target range of 3.75% to 4.00% after this week’s meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, which began on Tuesday. That would mean the sixth rate hike of 2022 and fourth-straight 0.75 percentage-point bump. The committee’s policy statement is out at 2 p.m. ET and Powell speaks at 2:30 p.m. ET.
