by ZeroHedge News Staff at ZeroHedge
One day after the Fed’s bizarre, unexpected pivot, many are struggling to wrap their heads around what happened: what exactly changed in less than two weeks for Powell to go from telling the market it was “premature to conclude with confidence that we have achieved a sufficiently restrictive stance, or to speculate on when policy might ease” to suddenly warning that rate cuts are something “that begins to come into view, and is clearly a topic of discussion out in the world and also a discussion for us at our meeting today.”
Even Powell’s own mouthpiece, WSJ reporter Nick “Nikileaks” Timiraos, was confused remarking sarcastically after the FOMC “what a difference two weeks can make.”
Ok, so let’s take a closer look at the two weeks between Dec 1 and Dec 13 when supposedly everything changed.
What we find is that the main economic events that took place were the ISM Services on Dec 5, the November Payrolls report on Dec 8, the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment report, the CPI report on Dec 12 (and let’s add today’s retail sales data just for additional context).
Turning to each of these in order,…
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