저자: Kevin · 외국인
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파월 마지막 FOMC 기자회견 해설. 8-4 표결로 합의 약화, 금리 동결 기조와 2027년 전까지 인하 어려움 전망. 유가(브렌트 약 120달러)가 핵심 경계요인이며 반도체·AI 주도 상승장과 탐욕 지수 과열을 언급. 개인 낙관 입장이나 구체적 종목 가격 목표는 제시하지 않음.
다듬은 글
That was it. Jerome Powell's final press conference as a Fed chair. Let's close the door. the door. Man, he's going to be missed. But, there's good news. We have a lot to talk about about what Jerome Powell just said and a special coupon code called goodbye Powell before we raise prices with some amazing new updates coming out in May for the Meet Kevin course and then in June for househack.com.
But, for now, let's focus on the Federal Reserve. It is over and we are going to cover at the end of this segment a report card on Jerome Powell. We'll talk about his bullishness on the economy. We'll talk about rate cuts and a bar that he sets for rate hikes, which is also bullish and kind of important.
I will talk about Powell leaving versus not leaving transitory inflation, all the good stuff. We're going to try to keep it short and just stick to what was different this time. So, one thing that was different this time is we had an eight-to-four vote, which was the least amount of consensus that we have seen since October of 1992.
Miron voted for a cut of 25 basis points. That's the only reason he seems to exist anyway. Although, you know, he does have some sound logical arguments for continuing to cut and ensure that labor market doesn't break through as it sort of has been trending down, though recently stabilizing. Hammock, Kashkari, and Logan really voted for a decline because they wanted to remove the easing bias from the statement, which it's almost you really have to kind of read between the lines to get it.
But, basically, in their statement, the implication is, "Hey, we're going to wait on the extent and timing of additional adjustments as we assess incoming data." And so, they wanted a little bit more of a clear, "Hey, we're just not going to do anything until the oil shock clears." Which, in fairness, is probably one of the worst or most complicated issues we face now.
I have sort of a warning bell that starts ringing that I've been paying attention to since, you know, Brent was $95. With course members, I'm like, "Look, we start getting to 120 on Brent crude and markets are going to slowly start reacting to that. That's why this Monday I went into markets. I'm like, You know, we're at 665 on the Qs.
Probably not the week for calls. You know, markets on the Qs right now are slightly green, but we're at 661. So, we're we're still down from where we were Monday. Let earnings happen. Let's get through some of this volatility. Right now, Donald Trump is prepping us and this was wild. This was happening during the uh Fed statement release.
Donald Trump apparently telling us that he thinks the war in Ukraine might end before the war in Iran, which is literally the last thing you want to hear. We saw oil move up another three or four percentage points uh after those comments, which uh now pushes out 119, which is just $1 away from my alarm bell.
And practically, just to give it to you straight, uh the reason I call 120 the alarm bell is not because it's some recessionary threshold. It's not. It's just that's when everybody starts talking about it again. And the more people start talking about it, the institutions start complaining about it.
Oh my gosh, if we get to 130 or 150 or this, that's usually when you start getting more of that hedging and selling. So, it's sort of like an early alarm bell to where you get institutions getting a little bit more nervous, which could lead to less of that rush to buying stocks. Especially when the CNN greed and fear, I really hate even using the name CNN.
But, the greed and fear index right now is at greed. I I Like, I It wouldn't be unreasonable for you to have a miss at a certain company in earnings over the next two or three weeks. See a little bit of a pullback. Uh and this is despite the fact that I've broadly become more bullish on economic data since the war has begun.
Our bull-bear scale is almost at 7 and 1/2 right now and a lot of that is based on underlying economic data, what it whether it was the capital good spending that we saw this morning, ex-air, ex-military spending, obviously a lot of that artificial intelligence, or just the stabilization and growth that we're seeing in the labor market even on private payroll surveys.
Now, Jerome Powell did pick up on though that as well. In fact, he said PDFP, which is, you know, one of his favorite measures, is actually growing faster than than what we're seeing on um uh some of the GDP numbers or even uh you know, the numbers that we got this morning, uh commercial purchases. That stands for private domestic final purchases.
It's sort of the Fed's preferred measure for how the economy is growing, and he argues that PDFP P indicates that the economy is actually growing better than a 2% rate. And he actually acknowledges the pain that people have, which is, if you don't have a job right now, or you've just lost your job, or you've been unemployed, or you know people who are are unemployed, you don't feel like the economy is good.
You feel like a crappy place or a crappy situation, which is totally reasonable and fair because it's so much harder to get a job now. And you're sort of waiting for somebody else to lose a job to hopefully fill that seat. And so that has made the labor market less desirable for people, but it's also created less labor market inflation, which is ironically good for the Federal Reserve in reducing some of those inflationary pressures, especially since as Powell put it, we've been dealing with shock after shock after shock.
You know, whether it was Ukraine, following COVID, or now recently the Iran shock, or what we saw in 2043, you know, we had a banking crisis for a period of time, right? There's been a lot. So anyway, this dissent though, where there's this talk about uh like removing the easing bias, in my opinion does set up a little bit of a harder time for Kevin Warsh, who will be coming in May 15th as the Fed chair, and then of course we have our mid-June, I think it's the 19th, mid-June will be the next FOMC presser.
And I'm a little sad because I've been covering Jerome Powell honestly for 8 years. It's it's weird. You know, I said if he sticks the soft landing, I got to put a a statue in my yard of of Jerome Powell, you know, with some kind of like smug arms crossed face. Maybe with like a hard hat on, you know, for the Jerome Powell and Trump meeting.
Uh somebody apparently is going to email me their info on making a a bronze bust. You know, I'll go for bronze or stone or whatever. You know, we need like You know, we need Federal Reserve marble. Anyway, you can email me if you ever have questions on the courses or or you ever have questions whatever, just email us.
Email staff at meetkevin.com. Data dependent. All right. Anyway, um you know, so I do think that it is getting a little bit harder for the Federal Reserve to create consensus because there's a lot of talk about, hey, like we don't know how long this oil shock is going to last, the direction of uh the straight-up moves, uh the direction of um you know, uh the uh consumer spending.
Consumer spending is holding up. Jerome Powell echoed what we heard from bank earnings, JP Morgan, Wells. We've covered that on the channel. That broadly the consumer spend is holding up as it has been really since COVID. Uh and and so the question is, you know, how much longer can consumers keep spending through these higher oil and air prices or whatever?
And so far, it's been resilient. Now, of course, part of that is probably because the biggest spenders are higher net worth or even middle net worth individuals who have exposure to the stock market, which has been very bullish over the last few weeks. We called on buying calls and going bullish literally the day of the ceasefire.
And I think I had this mountain of people complaining saying, "Kevin, you're an idiot. Stocks are going to go down even more." And I'm like, "Ha, the more the more these comments complain, the more I think I'm right about this call that we're going straight up." And we did. You know, the call was straight up on hardware, went straight up.
AMD is up like 50%. SOXL was up like, you know, 126%. And and I think the next move after hardware, even though we might have a little bit of a dip here in the near future with these oil prices, will be software, but that could still be 6 months out. You got to get that SpaceX IPO. But anyway, I do think that when Warsh comes in June, it's going to be a little harder for him to try to bias towards cuts because people at the Fed, you know, these these voting members, they they don't want to cut right now.
They want to hold. Holding is really the bias. And so Jerome Powell argues that he's likely going to stay at the Federal Reserve until the battering of the Federal Reserve is completely signed, sealed, delivered, and over. He says over the weekend there was some optimism that they, you know, they gave him some comments that they won't reopen the case against him unless there's a criminal referral from the Federal Reserve's Inspector General, which there won't be since the Federal Reserve's Inspector General has already cleared Powell.
Uh but he wants confirmation that there's no intention that they're going to restart investigations. Uh and Powell won't leave until he's assured that it's over. So he's going to stay. This is not a surprise because if he left, the day after he leaves, I my anticipation was that Trump would just refile a lawsuit against Powell, and then he'd have to defend that personally, and it'd kind of be like dirty.
So Powell mentions he's staying as a check and balance. He doesn't want to be a shadow Fed chair. He wants to keep a low profile. And uh you know, he wants to be part of maintaining what he believes is an independent political institution. And you might not like Powell. He's certainly not been perfect.
No person is, but I have to say, if if you call him a politician, I don't know if you call him a politician or or, you know, a bureaucrat might be the better word, he's probably my favorite bureaucrat. And it's kind of sad to sort of see him kind of like retire and fade out into the distance because I actually think he has the balls to stand up for what he believes in.
Whether or not you believe he's right or wrong, I think he has the balls to stand up for it, and I really respect that. I think he's transparent. Uh you know, I don't think he's like an insider trader slimeball or corrupt or a fraud. Like I think those are all uh slanders against him. And and you know, maybe my judgment is wrong, but I I think uh I I I personally think he's a great person and I'm sad to see him leave.
Maybe it's just because I've been covering him for 8 years. Uh but uh anyway. So, uh Powell is going to stay. Uh he does get to stay until at least uh if he wants until maximumly, I should say, January 31st of 2028. Uh Donald Trump will still be in office for another year after that. So, he can't wait out all of Trump's term.
But, he can certainly get through midterms. And that's probably where Powell, you know, maybe before the holidays he checks out or you know, whatever. Uh but overall, Powell reiterates uh really that we shouldn't expect cuts until probably 2027. We have to get through these shocks. And we need to start seeing those one-time effects from the tariffs roll over over the next 6 months.
Because they were applied in April, May, June, July, August, September, all the way through November, we should start seeing some of those year-over-year effects roll over May, June, July, all the way through November. You know, we had our Chinese tariff deal late in November of 2025. So, you got to get all those numbers to roll over year over year.
That's why Powell says over the next 6 months you're going to be paying attention to those numbers rolling over. If those numbers roll over at the same time oil prices come down, then we can potentially start hinting about, you know, rate cuts again. Uh but potentially as soon as the next meeting we're actually going to remove the easing bias and just go towards a neutral or holding until we get more data.
We're going with meeting by meeting, you know, all that good stuff. So, basically, don't expect any movement from the Fed anytime soon. Now, as far as rate hikes, Powell actually kind of put a bar on this a little bit. Uh he he said, "We're trying to get inflation down with the least amount of damage.
We don't want to do it quickly, and so we're willing to be patient because we don't want to essentially crash the labor market. To me, that was actually a very solid sign that the Federal Reserve isn't rushing to repeat the 1970s where they like rapidly raise rates and and you know, this causes other problems.
You know, some argue that actually induces inflation itself by higher interest rates which increases cost of goods sold which therefore increases the prices that people are charged which is entirely possible. Uh and and in fact even likely. You know, how much that contributes relative to demand is obviously a question for economists to debate.
But, you know, to me Powell implied that the bar to hike is very high. And with Warsh, it's probably also very high. So, I don't think you're going to get hikes as much as people are going to clamor for that. I think you're going to get patience, especially since Powell says we're probably a little above neutral.
Neutral rate's probably 3 and 1/2 and we're slightly above 3 and 1/2 right now, sitting at about to be exact 3.625 is is where rates sit right now, right? That's between 3 and 1/2 and 3.75. That midpoint, that's roughly where we sit right now which is like an eighth above neutral. And Powell thinks that's roughly the right place.
Uh now, Powell's not going to be the chair anymore, but it's likely that others agree based on the voting that we're seeing in the commentary that we're seeing from others. So, I I actually agree with the strategy. I don't think there's a reason to rush uh for rate uh cuts at this point, especially because of what we're seeing with ADP.
Now, a lot of people haven't been paying attention to ADP, but last couple weeks of ADP, we've been averaging on a weekly basis through April 11th, 160,000 jobs created on the private ADP payrolls report. It's fantastic. Take that freaking jobs money and go join us using coupon code goodbye Powell. Expiring that tomorrow night.
We're just doing a quick one for Powell here, and then we'll raise the prices again because we've got some really cool new things coming out for course members in the Meet Kevin app, the desktop version. I mean, we are we are developing this stuff like crazy. It's it's fascinating what we're building in the background.
I can't wait to share it all. But But anyway, this is you know, this is broadly good. The the data that we're seeing. This is why the bull bear scale moves up. Now, one thing that I've been speculating on is that I almost feel like when the bull bear scale is in my bull bear scale is high, but at the same time like the greed and fear index is also high, it's not a time to buy.
Like in my opinion, a good time to buy is when this needle is at fear or obviously extreme fear, fear below. When this needle is at fear below and Kevin is above like a six or seven, right? Because that gives you sort of a wedge, if you will, because it means the broader market doesn't sort of align with Kevin's bullishness.
I actually agree with Powell though, where where Powell argues, look, the economy's doing great. I mean, he didn't declare victory here, but he's pretty optimistic about what we're seeing, not only on spending, of course, in part driven by artificial intelligence, in large part, frankly. But also what's going on with the stabilization of the labor market.
I would even go as far as calling it rebounding at this point with what we're seeing. And hopefully that continues. Obviously, things could change depending on how long the straight of our moves is close. But overall, this all felt very stable. I think he ended it on a high here, very respectable. I think he had a few mic drop moments.
Uh and you know, he argues that typically we're going to look through an oil shock. We've heard that before. But um you know, it's just a matter of time how long this oil shock continues. He's indicated that near-term inflation expectations have started to rise. That's probably due to oil prices literally skyrocketing.
You know, we're we're over double where we were in January. Uh we're about double where we were in January. We're about 60 bucks on Brent in January. And we're at about 120 bucks now. Just for the sake of exactness. Uh, so your the holding up, resilient, Powell's happy, and I think he's leaving on a high note.
I think he's done very well. And if I, you know, I mean, there's a problem obviously that the 10-year is 4.41. It's not great. Mortgage rates going up again. But that's all right. We'll probably see higher for longer as we've said. And um Anyway, if I had to give Powell a report card, honestly, I mean, he wasn't perfect.
Uh But I'd still probably give him like a 96 out of 100. You know, it'd still be an A+. You know, it's not a 100. You know, we know we had a little transitory oopsie-doopsies. It just lasted too long, right? It led the Fed to be too late in 2022. Uh, but they acknowledged that uh that slow reaction function.
Uh, but other otherwise, broadly, they've they've sailed this economy and directed this economy very well. I I think there's um there are still underlying issues to deal with. Uh, and Warsh will have to deal with that. His reputation doesn't make me very excited about the grade that he's going to get.
Who knows? Maybe he's a changed man. So, we'll see and we'll be covering it. That's obviously my opinion. And if you want more of my opinion in terms of uh trades, short-term trades, medium-term trades, which would be like 6 months to a year, or long-term trades, like 10-year trades, uh or really investments, uh and even if you have questions about investing in real estate or uh you know, the stock companies you want analyzed or whatever, make sure to join us in the uh live streams we do almost every morning when the market is open uh and right before the market is open, we do our Alpha report.
You go to meetkevin.com, you can join that. And uh we'll look forward to seeing you there. A lot of people write that off on their taxes as well as education. And folks, we'll see you in the next time. Uh oh, yeah. And then a quick note, since I see somebody leaving a comment here, uh I made some delicious bread yesterday.
Uh, if you want a good bread recipe, I put it on my Instagram at Meet Kevin as a story. I'm actually going to go eat some of it right now cuz I'm really excited about it and then we'll see what happens with earnings. But anyway, uh delicious molasses honey bread, whole wheat, protein like heavy on protein.
Oh, it's great. Anyway, we'll see you soon. Thanks for being here. Good luck on earnings if you're playing them. .
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