‘Dust off your rate-cutting playbook,’ J.P. Morgan tells clients—the evidence for a Fed cut just keeps piling up

Jerome Powell, chairman of the US Federal Reserve (Credit: Al Drago—Bloomberg/Getty Images)

• Jobless claims hit their highest level since 2021 last week, adding to recent labor market revisions that have fueled confidence the Fed will cut rates in September. Despite hotter CPI data, markets rallied on expectations of easing, with J.P. Morgan’s Elyse Ausenbaugh and UBS’s Mark Haefele urging investors to prepare portfolios for a rate-cutting cycle.

If markets needed further evidence for a September rate cut, they got it: Initial jobless claims for the first week of September came back as the highest in nearly four years.