The Federal Reserve is holding its first committee meeting of the year next week, during which the members will decide whether the aggressive increase of interest rates will continue or not.
Last week, there were a series of contradictory reports from various officials, such as St. Louis Fed President James, saying that the bank needs to move quickly to its target rate of 5% or higher. Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester commented a similar idea.
However, the Fed is now expected to slow the pace of rate hikes as some officials, such as Christopher Waller, said he favors a quarter percentage point rate hike at the next FOMC meeting. This is in line with the CME FedWatch tool, which predicts a 99.1% probability that the outcome of next week's FOMC meeting will be a 25 basis point rate hike. It said there is a 0.9% chance that the bank will take a more aggressive stance of raising rates by 50 basis points.
One of the most important reports to be released ahead of the Fed meeting is the US PCE (Personal Consumer Expenditures) index, which hit 4.7% last November and is expected to fall slightly to 4.4% in December.