Federal Reserve building in Washington. (Photo: iStock)
Last year's change of heart — or direction — for the Federal Reserve, that is, its decision to halt raising interest rates, had less to do with President Trump's tweeting and more to do with deteriorating economic data, said Chris Nicholson, vice president, product management at PGIM Investments, who told ThinkAdvisor the company sees growth for 2019 at 2.5%, down from 2018's 3%.
"That's still pretty good," he said. "In our mind with the Fed becoming more dovish … that has been more beneficial, number one, for interest rates coming down, and number two, for what we would call a spread product. It's worked well this year for high yield bonds, emerging markets, corporate credit — anything where there is a premium above Treasuries has done well."
He doubts Trump's comments had anything to do with the Fed's pivot, and may have actually caused it to be more "defiant to hear the president remarking on things that traditionally have been outside the scope of the administration. In many ways, it actually may have had the Fed hold on too long in terms of their view. It's on the opposite end, which was, 'we are not going to bend towards political influences.'"
Overall there isn't "an inflation problem," Nicholson said, and the Fed "is actually in kind of this sweet spot where growth looks pretty good." He added that "we feel really good about [2.5% growth as we believe] a recession is an extraordinary low probability."
