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- There's no reason why the Fed should cut rates right now, a JPMorgan market strategist says.
- The economy seems to be holding up fine, and growth projections for 2024 have only gone up.
- "In the absence of anything breaking down, it's hard to see why they would do anything here."
Investors have been holding their breath for rate cuts from the Federal Reserve, but there's no reason the central banks needs to do anything at all right now.
According to JPMorgan strategist Oksana Aronov, there's not a compelling reason the central bank would lower rates in the current environment.
"If I'm Jerome Powell, what really is the impetus for me to do anything right now?" Aronov, head of market strategy and fixed income, said in a CNBC interview. "The economy is doing fine, unemployment is below what the Fed considers to be neutral, the inflation rate is above — even in their longer term projections — their target, and the economy does not seem to be restricted by these rates."
Basically, don't try to fix what isn't broken.
"In the absence of anything breaking down, it's hard to see why they would do anything here," she added.
In fact, growth projections for 2024 have only increased, Aronov noted. The latest summary of economic projections from the Fed shows that officials expect the change in real GDP to notch 2.1% this year, as opposed to the 1.4% projected in December.
Other economists like Apollo's Torsten Sløk have also forecasted zero rate cuts this year. Should that turn out to be the case, it would be a problem for fixed-income investors.
"The passage of time will continue to spell disappointment because our 10-year [Treasury] is still very much priced for a 2% inflation world," she said. "If you think of the 10-year as growth plus inflation, it is not reflecting where growth and inflation is today as well as where the Fed is guiding it will be."
With stocks, it's a little different. Viewed through a lens of coming rate cuts, equities seem quite frothy, she said, though the rate cut narrative seems to have been sidelined by strong corporate earnings, which have given stocks more fuel to run.