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Friday, August 07, 2015

Merrill: Employment Report and a September Fed Rate Hike

by Calculated Risk on 8/07/2015 06:05:00 PM

An excerpt from a research piece by Merrill Lynch economist Micheal Hanson:

After the July employment report largely matched expectations, we anticipate that the FOMC should see enough cumulative progress to start the hiking cycle at the September meeting — the chance that liftoff occurs then continues to creep up, in our view. That said, there are still another five weeks until that meeting. With data dependence as the focus of the Fed, unexpected shocks or a broad-based slowdown in the data could still lead the Committee to delay hiking. The bigger question for some Fed officials and market participants is low inflation. We expect continued labor market gains to leave the FOMC “reasonably confident” on the inflation outlook come September — something they should communicate in upcoming speeches.
emphasis added
It seems more and more likely that the Fed will hike in September.