The importance of being patient

No longer patient but not impatient; bad data is good data? Financial markets appear to have taken US Federal Reserve (Fed) watching to new heights in recent months… How equity markets will react to the reality of higher US interest rates when it finally occurs is more difficult to say. Recent market reactions suggest not that well but the real answer is, to use the Fed’s language, economic data-dependent. The conundrum, however, is that as monetary policy since 2008 has been very unconventional, history gives us very little indication of how the economy and markets will actually react to higher interest rates. While the final date for “lift-off” is still being debated it should at least not come as a surprise to equity markets that rates are likely to go up. And it may be that the economy and equity markets come through relatively unscathed, just as they did with the end of the Fed’s Quantitative Easing program last year. Read the full report here: (VIEW LINK)