December S&P 500 E-Mini futures (ESZ24) are down -0.15%, and December Nasdaq 100 E-Mini futures (NQZ24) are down -0.23% this morning as investors refrained from making any big bets ahead of a key U.S. inflation report that could offer clues on the Federal Reserve’s policy path.
The minutes of the Federal Open Market Committee’s September 17-18 meeting, released Wednesday, showed that some officials favored a smaller, quarter-point cut. “Some participants observed that they would have preferred a 25-basis-point reduction of the target range at this meeting, and a few others indicated that they could have supported such a decision,” according to the FOMC minutes. Despite the debate, the minutes noted a “substantial majority” supported the outsized half-point rate cut. Also, nearly all participants agreed that the upside risks to inflation have diminished, while downside risks to employment have increased. In addition, Fed officials aimed to communicate to the public that their policy “recalibration” should not be “interpreted as evidence of a less favorable economic outlook or as a signal that the pace of policy easing would be more rapid than participants’ assessments of the appropriate path.”
