Fed up with Fed Talk? Fact-checking Central Banking Fairy Tales!
Fed up with Fed Talk? Fact-checking Central Banking Fairy Tales!
The big story on Wednesday, September 18, was that the Federal Reserve’s open market committee finally got around to “cutting rates”, and doing so by more than expected. This action, much debated and discussed during all of 2024, was greeted as "big" news, and market prognosticators argued that it was a harbinger of market moves, both in interest rates and stock prices. The market seemed to initially be disappointed in the action, dropping after the Fed’s announcement on Wednesday, but it did climb on Thursday. Overall, though, and this is my view, this was about as anticlimactic as a climactic event gets, akin to watching an elephant in labor deliver a mouse. As a long-time skeptic about the Fed’s (or any Central Bank’s) capacity to alter much in markets or the economy, I decided now would be as good a time as any to confront some widely held beliefs about central banking powers, and counter them with data. In particular, I want to start with the myth that central banks set interest rates, or at least the interest rates that you and I may face in our day-to-day lives, move on to the slightly lesser myth that the Fed's move lead market interest rates, then examine the signals that emanate supposedly from Fed actions, and finish off by evaluating how the Fed's actions affect stock prices.
The Fed as Rate Setter
As I drove to the grocery story on Fed Cut Wednesday, I had the radio on, and in the news at the top of the hour, I was told that the Fed had just cut interest rates, and that consumers would soon see lower rates on their mortgages and businesses on their loans. That delusion is not restricted to newscasters, since it seems to be widely held among politicians, economists and even market watchers. The truth, though, is that the Fed sets only one interest rate, the Fed Funds rate, and that none of the rates that we face in our lives, either as consumers (on mortgages, credit cards or fixed deposits) or businesses (business loans and bonds), are set by or even indexed to the Fed Funds Rate.
The place to start to dispel the “Fed sets rates” myth is with an understanding of the Fed Funds rate, an overnight intra-bank borrowing rate is one that most of us will never ever encounter in our lives. The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) has the power to change this rate, which it uses at irregular intervals, in response to economic, market and political developments. The table below lists the rate changes made by the Fed in this century:
Note that while most of these changes were made at regularly scheduled meetings, a few (eleven in the last three decades) were made at emergency meetings, called in response to market crises. As you can see from this table, the Federal Reserve goes through periods of Fed Funds rate activism, interspersed with periods of inactivity. Since the Fed Funds rate is specified as a range, there are periods where the effective Fed Funds rate may go up or down, albeit within small bounds. To gain perspective on how the Fed Funds rate has been changed over time, consider the following graph, where the effective fed funds rate is shown from 1954 to 2024:
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In addition to revealing how much the Fed Funds rate has varied over time, there are two periods that stand out. The first is the spike in the Fed Funds rate to more than 20% between 1979 and 1982, when Paul Volcker was Fed Chair, and represented his attempt to break the cycle of high inflation that had entrapped the US economy. The second was the drop in the Fed Funds rate to close to zero percent, first after the 2008 crisis and then again after the COVID shock in the first quarter of 2020. In fact, coming into 2022, the Fed had kept the Fed Funds rates at or near zero for most of the previous 14 years, making the surge in rates in 2022, in response to inflation, shock therapy for markets unused to a rate-raising Fed.
While the Federal Open Market Committee controls the Fed Funds rate, there are a whole host of rates set by buyer and sellers in bond markets. These rates are dynamic and volatile, and you can see them play out in the movements of US treasury rates (with the 3-month and 10-year rates highlighted) and in corporate bond rates (with the Baa corporate bond rate shown).
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There is a final set of rates, set by institutions, and sometimes indexed to market-set rates, and these are the rates that consumers are most likely to confront in their day-to-day lives. They include mortgage rates, set by lenders, credit card rates, specified by the credit card issuers, and fixed deposit rates on safety deposits at banks. They are not as dynamic as market-set rates, but they change more often than the Fed Funds rate.
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There are undoubtedly other interest rates you will encounter, as a consumer or a business, either in the course of borrowing money or investing it, but all of these rates will fall into one of three buckets - market-set interest rates, rates indexed to market-set rates and institutionally-set rates. None of these rates are set by the Federal Reserve, thus rendering the "Fed sets interest rates" as myth.
Response to comments: It is true that the prime rate remains one of the few that is tied to the Fed Funds rate, and that there is subset of business loans, whose rates are tied to the prime rate. That said, the portion of overall business debt that is tied to the prime rate has declined significantly over time, as variable rate loans have switched to treasury rates as indices, because they tend to be updated and dynamic. It is also true that central-bank set rates can affect a larger subset of rates in some countries, for one of two reasons. The first is that the country has poorly functioning or no bond markets, making market-set rates a non-starter. The second is if the government or central bank can force banks to lend at rates tied to the central bank rate. In both cases, though, the central banking power works only if it is restrained by reality, i.e., the central bank rate reflects the inflation and real growth in the economy. Thus, if inflation is 20%, a central bank that forces lenders to lend at 12% will accomplish one of two objectives - driving lending banks to calamity or drying up the market for business loans.
The Fed as Rate Leader
Even if you accept that the Fed does not set the interest rates that we face as consumers and businesses, you may still believe that the Fed influences these rates with changes it makes to the Fed Funds rate. Thus, you are arguing that a rise (fall) in the Fed Funds rate can trigger subsequent rises (falls) in both market-set and institution-set rates. At least superficially, this hypothesis is backed up in the chart below, where I brings all the rates together into one figure:
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As you can see, the rates all seem to move in sync, though market-set rates move more than institution-set rates, which, in turn, are more volatile than the Fed Funds rate. The reason that this is a superficial test is because these rates all move contemporaneously, and there is nothing in this graph that supports the notion that it is the Fed that is leading the change. In fact, it is entirely possible, perhaps even plausible, that the Fed's actions on the Fed Funds rate are in response to changes in market rates, rather than the other way around.
To test whether changes in the Fed Funds rate are a precursor for shifts in market interest rates, I ran a simple (perhaps even simplistic) test. I looked at the 249 quarters that compose the 1962- 2024 time period, breaking down each quarter into whether the effective Fed Funds rate increased, decreased or remained unchanged during the quarter. I followed up by looking at the change in the 3-month and 10-year US treasury rates in the following quarter:
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The Fed as Signalman
If you are willing to accept that the Fed does not set rates, and that it does not lead the market on interest rates, you may still argue that Fed rate changes convey information to markets, leading them to reprice bonds and stocks. That argument is built on the fact that the Fed has access to data about the economy that the rest of us don't have, and that its actions tell you implicitly what it is seeing in that data.
It is undeniable that the Federal Reserve, with its twelve regional districts acting as outposts, collects information about the economy that become an input into its decision making. Thus, the argument that Fed actions send signals to the markets has basis, but signaling arguments come with a caveat, which is that the signals can be tough to gauge. In particular, there are two major macroeconomic dimensions on which the Fed collects data, with the first being real economic growth (how robust it is, and whether there are changes happening) and inflation (how high it is and whether it too is changing). The Fed's major signaling device remains the changes in the Fed Funds rate, and it is worth pondering what the signal the Fed is sending when it raises or lowers the Fed Funds rate. On the inflation front, an increase or decrease in the Fed Funds rate can be viewed as a signal that the Fed sees inflationary pressures picking up, with an increase, or declining, with a decrease. On the economic growth front, an increase or decrease in the Fed Funds rate, can be viewed as a signal that the Fed sees the economy growing too fast, with an increase, or slowing down too much, with a decrease. These signals get amplified with the size of the cut, with larger cuts representing bigger signals.
Viewed through this mix, you can see that there are two contrary reads of the Fed Funds rate cut of 50 basis points on Wednesdays. If you are an optimist, you could take the action to mean that the Fed is finally convinced that inflation has been vanquished, and that lower inflation is here to stay. If you are a pessimist, the fact that it was a fifty basis point decrease, rather than the expected twenty five basis points, can be construed as a sign that the Fed is seeing more worrying signs of an economic slowdown than have shown up in the public data on employment and growth. There is of course the cynical third perspective, which is that the Fed rate cut has little to do with inflation and real growth, and more to do with an election that is less than fifty days away. In sum, signaling stories are alluring, and you will hear them in the coming days, from all sides of the spectrum (optimists, pessimists and cynics), but the truth lies in the middle, where this rate cut is good news, bad news and no news at the same time, albeit to different groups.
Response to comments: Fed rate change signals, as I mentioned, are tough to read. If you have strong priors on the Fed having power to drive markets, you can always the benefit of hindsight to bend the signal to match your priors.
The Fed as Equity Market Whisperer
It is entirely possible that you are with me so far, in my arguments that the Fed's capacity to influence the interest rates that matter is limited, but you may still hold on to the belief that the Fed's actions have consequences for stock returns. In fact, Wall Street has its share of investing mantras, including "Don't fight the Fed", where the implicit argument is that the direction of the stock market can be altered by Fed actions.
There is some basis for this argument, and especially during market crises, where timely actions by the Fed may alter market mood and momentum. During the COVID crisis, I complimented the Fed for playing its cards right, especially so towards the end of March 2020, when markets were melting down, and argued that one reason that market came back as quickly as they did was because of the Fed. That said, it was not so much the 100 basis point drop in the Fed Funds rate that turned the tide, but the accompanying message that the Federal Reserve would become a backstop for lenders to companies that were rocked by the COVID shutdown, and were teetering on the edge. While the Fed did not have to commit much in capital to back up this pledge, that decision seemed to provide enough reassurance to lenders and prevent a host of bankruptcies at the time.
If you remove the Fed's role in crisis, and focus on the effects of just its actions on the Fed Funds rate, the effect of the Fed on equity market becomes murkier. I extended the analysis that I did with interest rates to stocks, and looked at the change in the S&P 500 in the quarter after Fed Funds rates were increased, decreased or left unchanged:
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The Fed as Chanticleer
If the Fed does not set rates, is not a interest rate driver, sends out murky signals about the economy and has little effect on how stocks move, you are probably wondering why we have central banks in the first place. To answer, I am going to digress, and repeat an ancient story about Chanticleer, a rooster that was anointed the ruler of the farmyard that he lived in, because the other barnyard animals believed that it was his crowing every morning that caused the sun to rise, and that without him, they would be destined for a lifetime of darkness. That belief came from the undeniable fact that every morning, Chanticleer's crowing coincided with sun rise and daylight. The story now takes a dark turn, when one day, Chanticleer sleeps in and the sun rises anyway, revealing his absence of power, and he loses his place at the top of the barnyard hierarchy.
The Fed (and every other central bank) in my view is like Chanticleer, with investors endowing it with powers to set interest rates and drive stock prices, since the Fed's actions and market movements seem synchronized. As with Chanticleer, the truth is that the Fed is acting in response to changes in markets rather than driving those actions, and it is thus more follower than leader. That said, there is the very real possibility that the Fed may start to believe its own hype, and that hubristic central bankers may decide that they set rates and drive stock markets, rather than the other way around. That would be disastrous, since the power of the Fed comes from the perception that it has power, and an over reach can lay bare the truth.
Response to comments: My comments about the Fed being Chanticleer have been misread by some to imply that central banks do not matter, and Turkey (the country, not the Thanksgiving bird) seems to constantly come up constantly as an example of why central banks matter. Again, you are making my case for me. There is nothing more dangerous to an economy than a central bank that thinks it has the power to override fundamentals and impose its preferred interest rates in the economy. The Turkish central bank, perhaps driven by politics, seems to think that the solution to high interest rates (which are being driven by inflation) is to lower the rates that it controls. Not surprisingly, those actions increase expected inflation, and drive rates higher.... (see definition of insanity..)
Conclusion
I know that this post cuts against the grain, since the notion that the Fed has superpowers has only become stronger over the last two decades. Pushed to explain why interest rates were at historic lows for much of the last decade, the response you often heard was "the Fed did it". Active investors, when asked why active investing had its worst decade in history, losing out to index funds and to passive investors, pointed fingers at the Fed. Market timers, who had built their reputations around using metrics like the Shiller PE, defended their failure to call market moves in the last fifteen years, by pointing to the Fed. Economists who argued that inverted yield curves were a surefire predictor of recessions blamed the Fed for the absence of a recession, after years of two years plus of the phenomena.
I believe that it is time for us to put the Fed delusion to rest. It has distracted us from talking about things that truly matter, which include growing government debt, inflation, growth and how globalization may be feeding into risk, and allowed us to believe that central bankers have the power to rescue us from whatever mistakes we may be making. I am a realist, though, and I am afraid that the Fed Delusion has destroyed enough investing brain cells, that those who holding on to the delusion cannot let go. I am already hearing talk among this group about what the FOMC may or may not do at its next meeting (and the meeting after that), and what this may mean for markets, restarting the Fed Watch. The insanity of it all!
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