US Federal Reserve is broadly expected to hike its near zero interest rates today. There are now 85% of expectations for a hike. In their last meeting, they said that they don't want to surprise markets, hence if they fail in lifting off today, it would spur a violent market reaction into illiquidity in the year end.
Assumptions are that they would go ahead with the most expected hike, with all the concentration on how the FOMC would define "gradual". Recently some of its members noted that fed dots are best guide for monitoring the expected tightening path.
"If the most recent dots (from Sept) are taken at face value, they imply a hike today followed by a 25bp hike at every other meeting in 2016. They also suggest an additional 125bp of tightening in 2017. Yet the FF market remains priced for a much shallower path-practically expecting one rate hike per half year through the end of 2017", says RBC Capital markets in a research note.
Many of the market participants are expecting a "dovish hike" today, which means that a hike with downward revision to the Fed dots and a rhetoric to be announced in the conference that the rate-hike path would be closer to the anticipations of market.


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