After the Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell delivered hawkish commentary along with a 25 basis points rate cut on Wednesday, the markets have slipped for two consecutive days. Even as the Fed's December dot plot projects only two additional 25-basis-point cuts in 2025, this analyst expects up to four rate cuts in 2025.
What Happened: Chairman and Founder of Navellier & Associates, Louis Navellier said, “In my opinion, the stock and bond market reactions to the FOMC Statement, dot plot, and Fed Chairman Powell's press conference were grossly overdone and eviscerated all the stock market gains since the Presidential election.”
He added that Powell’s comment that the Fed's year-end inflation forecast has "kind of fallen apart" did not inspire confidence.
Navellier thinks that the Fed could possibly follow the falling interest rates in the Eurozone as Europe’s largest economies, Germany and France, are slipping into recession.
“The European Central Bank will be cutting key interest rates 4 to 5 times in 2025 until key interest rates are at 2% to 1.75%. Most Fed watchers and the FOMC itself do not see all these global dominos falling in the eurozone as the recession in its largest economy, Germany, gets worse. The second-largest economy in the eurozone, France, is also slipping into a recession.”
See Also: Fed’s Powell Shocks Markets After Interest Rate Cut: ‘It’s A New Phase’
Why It Matters: According to Navellier, both France and Germany are in the midst of a political crisis and are "headless" until new leadership emerges. “As a result, I am expecting up to four Fed rate cuts in 2025 as collapsing interest rates in the eurozone also cause U.S. Treasury yields to decline,” he said.
Pointing out one of the first things that Powell said was “it was close” on the decision to cut or not. Navellier described this as “the most telling thing” about his speech as 95% of the market bet was for a cut.
However, he thinks the current pullback in the market could become a buying opportunity “if earnings continue to rise as expected.”
Price Action: The SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust SPY has fallen by 3.33% over the last five trading sessions, while Invesco QQQ Trust QQQ has slipped 3.06% in the same period. On a year-to-date basis, both the ETFs are up 24% and 27.72%, respectively.
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Photo courtesy: Federal Reserve
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