Stocks were mixed yesterday as the S&P 500 made minor gains but the Dow and Nasdaq inched lower. This morning futures are up as investors anticipate the afternoon announcement from the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee.
The central bank is unlikely to alter short-term interest rates, but investors will be looking for signs of future tightening in the accompanying press release, and any new forecasts on the growth outlook could have a direct impact on the market.
“With the Fed explicitly committing itself to keeping interest rates ‘exceptionally low’ for an extended period of time, the actual interest rate announcement is unlikely to attract much attention,” said analysts from TD Securities. “Instead, the focus will undoubtedly be on the tone and content of the statement.”
The announcement will be made at 2:15 pm, but two key releases in the morning will dictate the direction of early trading.
Key Releases Today:
8:30 ― Durable Goods dropped 2.2% in March, rebounded 1.7% in April, and in May analysts expect the volatility to continue with a 0.5% decline. Forecasts are divided from -2.0% to +1.0%, as defense orders could be hard to forecast this month following a spike in April.
Joseph LaVorgna, chief U.S. economist at Deutsche Bank, said orders for durable goods are “notoriously volatile and prone to revision,” but the fact that they are forward- looking makes them hard to ignore.
“We expect orders, headline and ex transportation, to bottom out some time over the next few months but we expect the recovery to be extremely muted in light of massive excess capacity in the factory sector,” he said. “According to the Fed’s capacity utilization rate, factories are operating at only 68.3% of their total capacity, the lowest reading on record.”
In last month’s release, orders were down nearly 25% compared to last year.
10:00 ― The third real estate release of the week is expected to show housing conditions slowly improving in May. The annualized pace of New Home Sales is expected to climb from 352k to 365k. At the current sales pace there are 10.1-months worth of supply on the market, compared to about 6 months in a healthy market, so any improvement will be welcome.
An improvement would mark the second straight gain in sales, something that hasn’t occurred in close to two years.
2:15 ― The FOMC Policy Annoucement could be the biggest release of the week if the Fed decides to shift policy, release updated forecasts, or hint at future tightening.
Analysts at IHS Global Insight expect the central bank to keep growth forecasts unchanged even as they lift forecasts for the unemployment rate.
“However, the Fed may have to come to terms with the likely stalling effect of higher mortgage rates and gasoline prices on the timing and strength of the long-awaited recovery,” they added. “In this regard, the FOMC will likely see downside risks to the core inflation rate, and may rebalance the focus of its quantitative programs in favor of term mortgage, treasury and TALF assets and away from increasingly redundant short-term bank credit.”