Markets

Breakdown of the latest developments on the global exchanges
Mar 22, 2019, 12:00 PM GMT
#InterestRate

The FED Kept Interest Rate levels, Takes On a Really Dovish Stance

The US federal reserve decided to keep the interest rates at the current 2.50% level, which confirmed the initial forecasts, yet Jerome Powell, the chairman of the FED, presented a very dovish outlook by the FED for the US economy until the end of fiscal 2019.

Given the current global economic stalemate, owing to the hindered international trade, the FED stated that it would not be raising the interest rates until the end of this year, as we have estimated in our previous article.

In our Weekly Expectations article from this Monday we argued that the FED would be more than likely to take a similar stance to the ones expressed by the ECB and the BOJ, and present the lower-than-expected inflation levels as one of the biggest reasons for abstaining from lifting the interest rates until the end of the year. Indeed the FED statement confirmed our initial expectations for embracing a dovish economic policy, also owing to President Trump's prolonged trade war with China.

After the statement was released, the US dollar index collapsed to 95.74 but then found support at the lower range line, that can also be seen in a chart from this Monday's weekly expectations article, and then closed above this range’s support level. Overall, the index lost 0.50% in Wednesday’s trading session, but then it quickly corrected these losses in the next two trading days.