Asian Session Morning: FOMC; How Dovish Was The Fed?

 | Jun 17, 2015 08:07PM ET

Morning View:
What we can take out of last night’s FOMC meeting is that although the Fed signaled that a pickup in the overall economy is keeping it on track to hike rates this calendar year, they are now talking down the rate that rates will be lifted.

From a data point of view, Yellen singled out gains in the labour market as positives:

“Since the committee last met in April, the pace of job gains has picked up and labour-market gains have improved further.”


The big line, however, now seems to be:

“The date of the first rate increase is less important than the trajectory of subsequent rate increases.”


This was the point that markets have taken the most notice of, seeing this as more dovish than what has previously been priced in, and therefore sending the USD crashing down.

Take a look at the Fed “Dot Plot,” which shows where individual FOMC members are forecasting that the federal funds rate will be in the coming months:


As shown above, with hikes coming still as early as September, any weakness in USD on the back of perceived wording can most definitely be viewed as a buying opportunity over the coming months.

So where does this decision leave EUR/USD? In yesterday’s FOMC preview, we spoke about the way that big fundamental decisions like this almost always end up sitting on major technical levels such as the one marked on the daily chart below.

EUR/USD Daily: