“This Is Not The Reaction The Fed Wanted”: Goldman Warns Yellen Has Lost Control Of The Market

With stocks soaring briskly around the globe following Yellen’s “dovish” hike, and futures set for a sharply higher open with the Nasdaq approaching 6,000, something surprising caught our attention: in a note by Goldman’s Jan Hatzius, the chief economist warns that the market is overinterpreting the Fed’s statement, and Yellen’s presser, and cautions that it was not meant to be the “dovish surprise” the market took it to be.
Specifically, he says that while the FOMC delivered the expected 25bp hike, with only minor changes to its projections. “surprisingly, financial markets took the meeting as a large dovish surprise – the third-largest at an FOMC meeting since 2000 outside the financial crisis, based on the co-movement of different asset prices.”
Even more surprisng is that according to Goldman, its financial conditions index, “eased sharply, by the equivalent of almost one full cut in the federal funds rate.”
In other words, the Fed’s 0.25% rate hike had the same effect as a 0.25% race cut!
The implication from the market’s reaction is that at current levels, financial conditions are poised to make a substantial positive contribution to growth in 2017, from a starting point of essentially full employment, inflation close to the target, and a sub-1% funds rate; which in light of concerns about an economic overheating due to Trump’s fiscal policies is precisely the opposite of what Yellen wants. Hatzius warns that “the FOMC will lean against this, and will deliver more monetary tightening than discounted in the bond market.”
It gets better: Goldman’s chief economist – like virtually all other carbon-based market participants – admits he was stunned by the market reaction to the Fed rate hike. While Hatzius agrees that the general direction of the market response makes sense, “the magnitude greatly surprised us” and adds that Wednesday’s price action was scored by Goldman’s models “as the third-biggest dovish surprise at an FOMC meeting since 2000, at least outside the financial crisis.”

This post was published at Zero Hedge on Mar 16, 2017.