The Federal Reserve says it is too early to think about cutting interest rates this year. Investors are growing more convinced that is exactly what the central bank is going to do.
The clash between investors' hopes and Fed policy, and how it ultimately resolves, is shaping up to be one of the biggest question marks for financial markets in 2023.
Many money managers predict inflation has peaked, and that price pressures will fall so fast that the Fed takes back some of its interest-rate increases by the end of the year, as it did in 2019 just seven months after its last hike.
Fed officials have been hammering a different message: This time will be different because inflation is much higher.
The Labor Department said Thursday that its consumer-price index, which measures what consumers pay for goods and services, rose 6.5% in December from a year earlier. That marked its slowest pace since October 2021, and its sixth consecutive monthly decline. Last week's jobs report also showed wage growth cooled, with average hourly earnings rising at the slowest pace since mid-2021.
Evidence that inflation is pulling back has fueled bets that the Fed will cut rates as early as the second half of the year. Traders in interest-rate derivatives markets see a 90% chance that the Fed lifts rates two more times this year, to around 4.9% by March, according to CME Group. They see a 60% chance that the Fed then cuts rates at least once by December.
At their meeting last month, Fed officials projected interest rates will continue rising through the spring, to around 5.1%. None of them penciled in cuts this year. They have generally signaled a somewhat more aggressive path for interest rates either because they are less optimistic than investors, who see a speedier slowdown in inflation this year, or because they are less pessimistic about the probability of a serious recession.
"To be honest with you, I don't quite know why markets are so optimistic about inflation," said San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly after the Fed's meeting last month. "I think of them as priced for perfection," she said.
The Fed and many investors agree that inflation will keep declining this year as supply-chain bottlenecks abate and as housing costs slow down after soaring over the past two years. But Fed officials are nervous that the labor market's strength could sustain wage growth that keeps inflation, as measured by a separate gauge, above their 2% target.
Fed officials, Ms. Daly said, "don't have the luxury of pricing for perfection.... We have to imagine what the risks to inflation are."
One of her colleagues, St. Louis Fed President James Bullard, echoed that point after Thursday's report was released. "It could be that inflation starts to go in the other direction again, and then the Fed would have to react to that," he said during a webinar. "I don't think there's enough pricing being put on that possibility."
Investors who are counting on interest rates falling are at risk of being burned if they wind up being wrong.
The S&P 500 has risen 11% from its October low, with much of the gains being attributed to bets that the Fed will pivot from raising rates to cutting them some time this year. Government bonds have also retraced some losses after a brutal 2022. The yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note was at 3.446% Thursday, compared with its October peak of 4.231%. Yields fall as bond prices rise.
Several banks, including JPMorgan Chase & Co., UBS Group AG, and Deutsche Bank AG, are expecting U.S. stocks to post gains this year. But others are cautioning the market could suffer double-digit percentage declines yet again, especially if Fed policy winds up being tougher than investors anticipate, which in turn could cause the economy to slow down more than investors expect.
What explains the disconnect between the Fed and much of Wall Street?
"It is very simple: The market has a very different view on inflation. It thinks inflation is going to fall much faster than the Fed does," said Mark Cabana, the head of U.S. interest-rate strategy at Bank of America Corp.
In addition, there are important technical differences in what the Fed's quarterly economic and interest-rate projections show relative to what investors anticipate based on readings of interest-rate futures markets.
The Fed's projections represent what every individual Fed official thinks should happen to interest rates under their modal, or most likely, expectation for the economy. But those projections only reveal how the Fed is likely to respond under one general set of circumstances. Market participants, on the other hand, can make probability-weighted bets in interest-rate futures markets that better take into account different economic scenarios.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell has at times emphasized the limitations of the Fed's projections.
"When uncertainty around the outlook is unusually high, I dutifully write down what I see as the appropriate funds rate path in the most likely scenario, but I do so aware that this projection may be easily misinterpreted, for what is 'most likely' may not be particularly likely, " he said in 2019.
The past year served as a cautionary tale for many investors, with inflation and interest rates racing far higher than most foresaw. "Think about what the Fed and the market was projecting a year ago," said Joe Amato, president of Neuberger Berman Group.
The way stocks have bounced back the past few months suggests "there's a false sense of precision from the equity markets" on where rates are headed, he said.
Many investors also appear to be reluctant to take the Fed at its word, said Sam Lynton-Brown, head of global macro strategy at BNP Paribas SA.
"The market has learned that forward guidance for central banks, at a point when they're data-dependent and the data are volatile, doesn't hold much credibility," said Mr. Lynton-Brown. "It's all about what the data shows," and specifically, about whether or not the data suggest inflation will be able to quickly fall to the Fed's 2% target, he said. (Mr. Lynton-Brown doesn't believe that will be the case.)
The gap between Wall Street's expectations and Fed talk may also stem in part from central bankers' reluctance to come across as too optimistic in public.
The Fed believes its policies to slow demand and combat inflation work by tightening financial conditions, such as by raising borrowing costs or lowering stock prices and other asset values. Any market rallies that ease financial conditions could potentially hinder officials' effort to restrain hiring or wage growth.
"The minute the Fed acknowledges inflation isn't a problem anymore, markets will just speed higher," which would prolong the Fed's job, said Jack McIntyre, portfolio manager at Brandywine Global.
At the end of the day, what may matter most for markets isn't how high the Fed raises rates, but how well the economy is able to hold up over the coming year.
For instance, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. says if the U.S. narrowly avoids recession, as it expects it will, it sees stocks ending the year just a touch higher. If the economy were to go into recession, Goldman sees earnings growth sliding -- in which case, the S&P 500 could fall about 20%, a far different outcome.
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