Irrelevance of January Fed Minutes Shows How Fast Monetary Policy Is Moving
Helene Braun
With minutes from the U.S. Federal Reserve’s January meeting due out Wednesday, crypto traders might be forgiven for dismissing them entirely. Look how drastically the environment has changed in the past month: The January jobs report showed a much hotter labor market than expected by economists, explaining partly why last week’s Consumer Price Index report came in at a shocking 7.5%, larger than analysts predicted and the fastest pace in four decades. …Bullard’s statement crushed both stock and crypto markets, based on concerns that a more aggressive Fed could send prices for risky assets into a tailspin….“If the Fed surprises markets, the pace of this risk-off move will accelerate, perhaps dramatically,” said Federal Financial Analytics’ managing partner Karen Petrou. “Cryptocurrency will suffer like all ‘risk-off’ market sectors in this scenario, but perhaps suffer worse because its volatility is so much greater.”