Fed Chair Powell took part in moderate discussion at event organized by San Francisco Fed. Powell spoke on the monetary policy, but his remarks included no surprises and did not trigger any major market reactions. Key headlines from Powell can be found below:

  • My first thought on PCE was in-line with expectations, good to see in-line with expectations
  • February reading is definitely more along the lines of what we want to see
  • We didn't overreact to last year's good data, you won't hear us overreacting to these two higher months this year
  • Reducing rates too soon would be very disruptive
  • Waiting too long could mean unneeded damage to the economy and the labor market
  • We are ready for economy to perform in unexpected ways
  • Monetary policy is well-placed to react to a range of different data paths
  • Getting it right is the most important thing by orders of magnitude
  • We want to be more confident before we cut rates
  • We've been surprised by data
  • We have to be unusually humble and ready for different outcomes
  • We have been saying we expect inflation to move to 2% on sometimes bumpy path
  • We are going to have to let the data tell us if it's a bump, we don't know
  • If our base case doesn't happen, we would hold rates where they are for longer
  • We don't know where rates are going to go back to when this whole thing is over
  • The economy is not suffering from this level of rates
  • If we see unexpected weakness in labor market, that could draw a policy response

EURUSD barely saw any moves during Powell's speech. Source: xStation5