Market Recap 11/30: Powell's press conference, employment data and home sales

Summary of Jerome Powell's speech:

• FED may start slowing the pace of rate hikes as early as the December meeting

  • “The time for moderating the pace of rate increases may come as soon as the December meeting,”

• FED has made substantial progress with current policy, in complete contrast to the tone on 11/02 that FED still needed to do more to achieve results with the current interest rate policy.

  • "have made substantial progress towards sufficiently restrictive policy"

• Powell stressed that the timing to start slowing the rate hike process is not as important as how much further rates need to be raised to curb inflation, or for how long.

  • the timing of that moderation is far less significant than the questions of how much further we will need to raise rates to control inflation, and the length of time it will be necessary to hold policy at a restrictive level.”

• Inflation shows no signs of being under control

  • “It will take substantially more evidence to give comfort that inflation is actually declining. By any standard, inflation remains much too high.”

• Interest rate projections after Powell's speech:

• Stock market reaction by sectors:

Employment data report:

• US lost 353,000 job openings in October:

• In November, the US only added 127,000 jobs, much lower than the expected 200,000:

Q3 GDP revised higher from +2.8% to +2.9%, mainly in personal consumption (PCE) up from 1.5% to 1.7%:

Meanwhile, Pending Home Sales continued to plummet, down -4.6% in October after dropping -8.7% in the previous month: