Ahead of the Federal Reserve statement and presser today comes a beautifully-timed paper from the Centre for Economic Policy Research’s VoxEU:
Market volatility is three times higher during press conferences held by current Chair Jay Powell than those held by his predecessors, and they tend to reverse the market’s initial reactions to the Committee statements…
This reversal in direction is systematically linked to the words used in Chair Powell’s speeches.
Perhaps shouldn’t come as a huge surprise that the Fed chair who presided over a global pandemic, and then the resulting rebound and inflation, has seen larger market reactions to press conferences than his predecessor:
