Federal Reserve Grinch Tries To Steal Christmas From Stock Market

The S&P 500 (Index: SPX) had a rough week just ahead of the Christmas and New Year holidays.

The rough going was courtesy of the grinches at the Federal Reserve, who did their best to steal Christmas from investors by putting the kibosh on the prospects for more than two interest rate cuts in 2025. Since we covered the immediate aftermath of their Scrooge-like pronouncements, all that's left to cover is what happened after that.

What happened after the Fed's final announcement of 2024 is the S&P 500 managed to recover one of the three percent it lost on Wednesday, 18 December 2024. The index closed at 5,930.87, down two percent from where it ended the preceding week.

After the Fed reduced the Federal Funds Rate by a quarter point to a target range of 4.25-4.50% and signaled they weren't planning more than two rate cuts in 2025, the CME Group's FedWatch Tool dropped all but one rate cut from its forecast for all of 2025. The remaining projected rate cut is a 0.25% reduction in the Federal Funds Rate on 7 May (2025-Q2).

Not uncoincidentally, that's the future quarter upon which investors are focusing their attention. The latest update shows the late week rebound in stock prices that falls within the range associated with 2025-Q2 that the dividend futures-based model has been projecting for the index.

Alternative Futures - S&P 500 - 2024Q4 - Standard Model (m=+1.5 from 9 March 2023) - Snapshot on 20 Dec 2024

Here is the full trading week's worth of market moving headlines:

Monday, 16 December 2024

Tuesday, 17 December 2024

Wednesday, 18 December 2024

Thursday, 19 December 2024

Friday, 20 December 2024

The Atlanta Fed's GDPNow tool's projection of the real GDP growth rate for the current quarter of 2024-Q3 declined to +3.1% from the previous week's +3.3% annualized growth estimate.

Looking ahead, the next weeks should be relatively quiet in terms of market moving news for the markets, which will hopefully provide the conditions needed to deliver a traditional Santa Claus rally. We'll pick up the plot in the new year with the first 2025 edition of the S&P 500 chaos series on Monday, 6 January 2025.


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