A rate hike at this week’s FOMC meeting has nearly 100% chance of occurring. Overall, we have seen financial conditions getting tighter and growth data slowing but remaining at solid levels.
Slower Growth and Tightening Financial Conditions
When looking at recent economic data we see that growth has slowed but we are still growing at a reasonable rate. November payrolls fell short of expectations and jobless claims increased. On the other hand, we have seen a strong beginning to the holiday shopping season. Goldman Sachs Q4 GDP tracking estimate stands at +2.7% (quarter over quarter) while November’s current activity indicator stands at +2.9%. Goldman Sachs’s Global ex-US CAI, which measures international growth data, fell to 3.5%. This is still above the 3% “growth scare” that we had in the second half of 2015 and first half of 2016. Core PCE inflation has fallen back to 1.8% and core CPI has missed consensus three of the last four months. The reversal of Chinese auto tariffs gives us another positive data point to consider. Mid-year growth was on a 3.5%-4.0% pace but with this mixed data in mind we are looking closer to 2.5%-3.0%.
Financial conditions have tightened by 80 bp since the September FOMC meeting. This tightening is reflective of the recent selloff we have had in the stock market. The recent move has been more rapid than most policy makers had thought was needed to contain the overheating labor market.
With tighter financial conditions and a slowing in growth rate we would expect that this week’s meeting will have more dovish comments. During the most recent two intermeeting periods the two-year yield rallied an average of 3 basis points on FOMC statement days that followed FCI tightening of greater than 50 basis points, December’s is at +80 basis points.
Statement and Dot Plot
In the minutes of the November meeting the FOMC explained that policy was “not on a preset course” further explaining that they will use incoming data to be more flexible when encountering changing economic circumstances. Goldman Sachs expects that overall growth characterization will be downgraded from “solid” to “strong”. This downgrade can be attributed to the 3.8% mid-year growth rate easing by up to one percentage point. The expectation is that Powell will acknowledge the softer growth outlook.
We have also seen some comments out of Trump that have suggested that the current tightening is too fast. We see Wall Street and FOMC members not really taking those comments seriously.
Trump begs Fed to hit pause. Wall Street bets Powell won't blink https://t.co/J597IGD8hj pic.twitter.com/U1YTfJCazB
— Bloomberg Markets (@markets) December 18, 2018
Analyst projections for 2019, 2020 and 2021 shows a decrease in the number of estimated hikes for 2019. The median projection indicates 2 hikes in 2019 one in 2020 and zero in 2021. This is down from three in 2019, one in 2020, and zero in 2021 indicated in September’s SEP.
Why This Matters for Gold?
When thinking what this means for gold, we are going to focus mostly on the statements that proceed the almost guaranteed hike. If we see a more dovish statement, we would expect it to slow the Dollar and give a bid to gold. Oppositely, a more hawkish statement would give a strong bid to the dollar and most likely lead to a strong selloff in gold. We expect a dovish statement given the slowing growth and tightening financial conditions. As of today, these expectations are mostly priced into the dollar and the price of gold. These expectations help explain the recent gold bid. A further weakening dollar and strengthening gold price would be caused by more dovishness than expected. As of now we already expect a good amount of dovish comments from the FOMC meeting. Extreme dovishness is needed to fuel a dollar selloff and spark a gold bid.