Summary

The Fed has no room for errors at this week's FOMC meeting.

The communications must be crystal to avoid a repeat of the July disaster.

The Fed needs the market to cave in to its demands.

No matter how much the Fed has tried, the market still doesn't believe how serious the Fed is about bringing down inflation. The Fed has consistently said that it plans to raise rates to restrictive territory and hold rates there until there are clear signs that inflation is heading lower.

Yes, the Fed made a massive attempt to rein in the markets at Jackson Hole and hammered the point further in the days after Jackson Hole. Now, it needs to seal the deal. Yes, the market has started to buckle, but not enough. Fed Funds futures have repriced rapidly and now see terminal rates hitting nearly 4.4% by April.

Bloomberg

Markets Still Don't Believe The Fed

But still, the market is pricing in rate cuts by the end of 2023 and sees rates falling back to 4%. So yes, while the market agrees that rates need to go higher, it still believes the Fed will be cutting rates by around 40 bps by the end of next year. The spread between the April 2023 Fed Fund futures and December 2023 contracts on August 25 was 32 bps. The current spread suggests the market believes the Fed may be more aggressive in cutting rates next year.

Bloomberg

Sure, the Fed is making progress on higher rates, but the market doesn't believe that the Fed will be holding rates at the terminal level. That is where the Fed needs to finish what it started at Jackson Hole, and the best place for the Fed to deliver that final blow will be in its Summary of Economic Projections, or dot plots.

Higher For Longer

If the Fed wants to make its point clear, it will need to ensure that it not only sees rates getting to 4.4% or higher by the middle of 2023 but that it sees rates staying there for all of 2023 and perhaps through 2024. That is the message the Fed needs to send the market so that the Fed Funds futures begin repricing with that terminal rate holding at 4.4% so that the back of the futures curve lifts.