Forward guidance is a tool used by a central bank to exercise its power in monetary policy in order to influence, with their own forecasts, market expectations of future levels of interest rates.
Communication about the likely future course of monetary policy is known as "forward guidance". Individuals and businesses will use this information in making decisions about spending and investments. Thus, forward guidance about future policy can influence financial and economic conditions today. [1]
The strategy can be implemented in an explicit way, expressed through communication of forecasts and future intentions, sometimes known as Odyssean forward guidance. [2] Implied forward guidance also exists, sometimes referred to as Delphic forward guidance. It is a softer and less-binding version of forward guidance to achieve similar effects. Among the main central banks, Delphic forward guidance dominates, although there are a couple of exceptions such as the US Federal Reserve, which makes quite specific but still conditional statements, and the Bank of Japan. [3]
The communication policy of the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States has evolved over time. The current policy is known as "forward guidance" but this is quite recent. In fact, starting in 1994 the decisions of scheduled meetings have been announced to the public within a few minutes of 2:15 pm Eastern Time. Prior to 1994 monetary policy decisions were not announced, and investors had to indirectly infer policy actions through the size and type of open market operations in the days following each meeting. [4] In the current context, this could be called "reverse guidance". The policy of "forward guidance" came about in the early 2000s. [1] This has apparently resulted in a market-timing strategy, in use since 1994, "where the S&P500 index has on average increased 49 basis points in the 24 hours before scheduled FOMC announcements. These returns do not revert in subsequent trading days and are orders of magnitude larger than those outside the 24-hour pre-FOMC window. As a result, about 80% of annual realized excess stock returns since 1994 are accounted for by the pre-FOMC announcement drift". In fact, about half of the realized excess stock market returns between January 1980 and March 2011 were earned during the "pre-FOMC" window whereas there is no evidence of pre-FOMC returns before 1980. [4] The drift is generally not dependent on either the macro economic state, market trends or action taken by the FOMC [5]
The Federal Reserve System is the central banking system of the United States. It was created on December 23, 1913, with the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act, after a series of financial panics led to the desire for central control of the monetary system in order to alleviate financial crises. Over the years, events such as the Great Depression in the 1930s and the Great Recession during the 2000s have led to the expansion of the roles and responsibilities of the Federal Reserve System.
The Federal Reserve Act was passed by the 63rd United States Congress and signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson on December 23, 1913. The law created the Federal Reserve System, the central banking system of the United States.
The monetary policy of The United States is the set of policies related to the minting and printing of United States dollars, plus the legal exchange of currency, demand deposits, the money supply, etc. In the United States, the central bank, The Federal Reserve System, colloquially known as "The Fed" is the monetary authority.
Monetary policy is the policy adopted by the monetary authority of a nation to control either the interest rate payable for very short-term borrowing or the money supply, often as an attempt to reduce inflation or the interest rate, to ensure price stability and general trust of the value and stability of the nation's currency.
The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) is a committee within the Federal Reserve System that is charged under United States law with overseeing the nation's open market operations. This Federal Reserve committee makes key decisions about interest rates and the growth of the United States money supply. Under the terms of the original Federal Reserve Act, each of the Federal Reserve banks was authorized to buy and sell in the open market bonds and short term obligations of the United States Government, bank acceptances, cable transfers, and bills of exchange. Hence, the reserve banks were at times bidding against each other in the open market. In 1922, an informal committee was established to execute purchases and sales. The Banking Act of 1933 formed an official FOMC.
William McChesney Martin Jr. was an American business executive who served as the 9th chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1951 to 1970, making him the longest holder of that position. He was nominated to the post by President Harry S. Truman and reappointed by four of his successors. Martin, who once considered becoming a Presbyterian minister, was described by a Washington journalist as "the happy Puritan".
In the United States, the federal funds rate is the interest rate at which depository institutions lend reserve balances to other depository institutions overnight on an uncollateralized basis. Reserve balances are amounts held at the Federal Reserve to maintain depository institutions' reserve requirements. Institutions with surplus balances in their accounts lend those balances to institutions in need of larger balances. The federal funds rate is an important benchmark in financial markets.
Excess reserves are bank reserves held by a bank in excess of a reserve requirement for it set by a central bank.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta,, is the sixth district of the 12 Federal Reserve Banks of the United States and is headquartered in midtown Atlanta, Georgia.
In macroeconomics, inflation targeting is a monetary policy where a central bank follows an explicit target for the inflation rate for the medium-term and announces this inflation target to the public. The assumption is that the best that monetary policy can do to support long-term growth of the economy is to maintain price stability, and price stability is achieved by controlling inflation. The central bank uses interest rates as its main short-term monetary instrument.
Jeffrey M. Lacker is an American economist and was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond until April 4, 2017. He is now a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Economics at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Business in Richmond, Virginia.
Quantitative easing (QE) is a monetary policy action where a central bank purchases predetermined amounts of government bonds or other financial assets in order to stimulate economic activity. Quantitative easing is a novel form of monetary policy that came into wide application after the financial crisis of 2007–2008. It is used to mitigate an economic recession when inflation is very low or negative, making standard monetary policy ineffective. Quantitative tightening (QT) does the opposite, where for monetary policy reasons, a central bank sells off some portion of its holdings of government bonds or other financial assets.
Charles L. Evans was the ninth president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago from 2007 to 2023. In that capacity, he served on the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), the Federal Reserve System's monetary policy-making body.
This is a list of historical rate actions by the United States Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). The FOMC controls the supply of credit to banks and the sale of treasury securities. The Federal Open Market Committee meets every two months during the fiscal year. At scheduled meetings, the FOMC meets and makes any changes it sees as necessary, notably to the federal funds rate and the discount rate. The committee may also take actions with a less firm target, such as an increasing liquidity by the sale of a set amount of Treasury bonds, or affecting the price of currencies both foreign and domestic by selling dollar reserves. Jerome Powell is the current chairperson of the Federal Reserve and the FOMC.
James Brian Bullard is the chief executive officer and 12th president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, positions he has held since 2008. He is currently serving a term that began on March 1, 2021. In 2014, he was named the 7th most influential economist in the world in terms of media influence.
The U.S. central banking system, the Federal Reserve, in partnership with central banks around the world, took several steps to address the subprime mortgage crisis. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke stated in early 2008: "Broadly, the Federal Reserve’s response has followed two tracks: efforts to support market liquidity and functioning and the pursuit of our macroeconomic objectives through monetary policy." A 2011 study by the Government Accountability Office found that "on numerous occasions in 2008 and 2009, the Federal Reserve Board invoked emergency authority under the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 to authorize new broad-based programs and financial assistance to individual institutions to stabilize financial markets. Loans outstanding for the emergency programs peaked at more than $1 trillion in late 2008."
The interbank lending market is a market in which banks lend funds to one another for a specified term. Most interbank loans are for maturities of one week or less, the majority being overnight. Such loans are made at the interbank rate. A sharp decline in transaction volume in this market was a major contributing factor to the collapse of several financial institutions during the financial crisis of 2007–2008.
In monetary policy of the United States, the term Fedspeak is what Alan Blinder called "a turgid dialect of English" used by Federal Reserve Board chairs in making wordy, vague, and ambiguous statements. The strategy, which was used most prominently by Alan Greenspan, was used to prevent financial markets from overreacting to the chairman's remarks. The coinage is an intentional parallel to Newspeak.
The 1994 bond market crisis, or Great Bond Massacre, was a sudden drop in bond market prices across the developed world. It began in Japan and the United States (US), and spread through the rest of the world. After the recession of the early 1990s, historically low interest rates in many industrialized nations preceded an unexpectedly volatile year for bond investors, including those that held on to mortgage debts. Over 1994, a rise in rates, along with the relatively quick spread of bond market volatility across international borders, resulted in a mass sell-off of bonds and debt funds as yields rose beyond expectations. This was especially the case for instruments with comparatively longer maturities attached. Some financial observers argued that the plummet in bond prices was triggered by the Federal Reserve's decision to raise rates by 25 basis points in February, in a move to counter inflation. At about $1.5 trillion in lost market value across the globe, the crash has been described as the worst financial event for bond investors since 1927.
Marvin Seth Goodfriend was an American economist. He held the Allan H. Meltzer Professorship in economics at Carnegie Mellon University; he was previously the director of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. Following his 2017 nomination to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, the White House decided to forgo renominating Goodfriend at the beginning of the new term.