Today, several officials from the Federal Reserve will give speeches. Despite the Fed's anticipated interest rate cut last week and the release of more dovish signals than expected, internal divisions have become increasingly severe. The voting result for the interest rate cut by the Federal Open Market Committee was 9 votes in favor and 3 votes against — the most dissenting votes in six years, breaking the Fed's long-standing tradition of high consensus.
After the Fed officials maintained the outlook of only one interest rate cut in 2026, investors are particularly focused on the speeches from Fed officials.
Additionally, the U.S. non-farm payroll data released yesterday showed an increase of 64,000 non-farm jobs, exceeding the market expectation of 50,000, while the unemployment rate rose to 4.6%. Overall, this employment report indicates that the hiring momentum among U.S. companies has clearly weakened. The uncertainty brought about by tariff policies, as well as the high interest rate policies implemented by the Fed from 2022 to 2023 to curb inflation, continue to have a lagging effect that hampers employment.
The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) will continue to issue the weekly CFTC position report that was not published due to the government shutdown, tomorrow according to Beijing time.