Following yesterday’s FOMC meeting, in which it was decided to maintain $85 billion a month asset purchase program.
From the FOMC’s statement:
“…the Committee decided to await more evidence that progress will be sustained before adjusting the pace of its purchases. Accordingly, the Committee decided to continue purchasing additional agency mortgage-backed securities at a pace of $40 billion per month and longer-term Treasury securities at a pace of $45 billion per month. The Committee is maintaining its existing policy of reinvesting principal payments from its holdings of agency debt and agency mortgage-backed securities in agency mortgage-backed securities and of rolling over maturing Treasury securities at auction. “
The markets promptly reacted as the USD sharply depreciated against the Euro and Aussie dollar. In the commodities markets gold, silver and oil rallied soon after this decision was made. In the following Youtube video I sat down with Yohay Elam to discuss the latest FOMC meeting and the aftermath of this decision on the financial markets including forex, stocks and commodities.
The event was hosted by Financial Juice and featured a talk with Yohay Elam from ForexCrunch and myself.
Here is the background for this decision:
The main issue behind this meeting was whether the FOMC will start tapering QE3 soon. Many expect the FOMC could start tapering by roughly $10 to $25 billion a month of its asset purchase program.
According to Google Trends, the sharp increase in search results for the term “tapering” suggest people more suspect the Fed may taper QE3 in the September meeting.
For further reading: