Disbelief persists as Jefferies says ‘we must have misunderstood’ Fed’s message based on data

“We didn’t expect a 50 basis point rate cut today,” said Thomas Simons, an economist at Jefferies. “We thought the Fed had sent a clear message before the blackout period before the meeting that it was going to start slowly. We must have misunderstood the message because there was no evidence in the data released during the blackout period to suggest the Fed was going to start with a larger cut. That said, the forecasts don’t suggest we should expect a series of 50 basis point rate cuts going forward.”