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Progressive's Jeremy McKeown and Gareth Evans discuss the main events of the last week in financial markets. The primary focus is on the mixed messaging from the Federal Reserve with its interest rate decision described as a hawkish cut. Jeremy describes how we might interpret this move, which is now signalling only one further rate cut in 2026. Kevin "The Real Asset" Hassett is widely expected to be announced as Jay Powell's successor in January. Further, this has also been widely interpreted as allowing inflation expectations to run wild, thereby impacting the prices of gold and silver. However, the Fed decision makers are also looking at their responsibilities for employment and the functioning of financial markets. To this end, you might be mistaken that they have restarted QE. The move to inject liquidity into the short-term money markets might not be strictly QE, but it does expand the Fed's balance sheet, at least in the short term. Jeremy points to Japan as the source of the market dysfunction that policymakers might be preempting via this (temporary) injection. In US megacap land, news comes of a $1.5 trillion IPO for SpaceX, and a busy week for the Ellison family. Larry Ellison's Oracle highlighted the risks around the AI data centre build-out, but also his son and other high-profile backers were behind the $108bn hostile bid for Warner Bros. Jeremy highlights the precedent for such giant hostile bids, and it is an interesting list! Surely nothing to see here. Looking ahead, there will be further evidence next week of the weakening US jobs market. The events in Venezuela and the Ukraine peace process will also be centre stage.
