The Fed’s Long Awaited Decision Day Arrives, And Chinese Stocks Wipe Out In The Last 15 Minutes

The long awaited day is finally here by which we, of course, mean the day when nobody has any idea what the Fed will do, the Fed included.
Putting today in perspective, there have been just about 700 rate cuts globally in the 3,367 days since the last Fed rate hike on June 29, 2006, while central banks have bought $15 trillion in assets, and vast portions of the world are now in negative interest rate territory.
As we noted yesterday, while the fed funds market implies a 32% probability of a rate hike one day ahead of the decision (which compares to 70% in 1994, 76% in 1999 and 92% in 2004), investors are torn about today, with 57% saying the Fed should hike today, but only 42% expecting the Fed will announce a rate hike at 2pm. Of the 113 estimates on Bloomberg, 59 are calling for the Fed to stay put and 51 are calling for a 25bp hike, with the remaining 3 estimates calling for a 12.5bp move.
The Fed itself is not sure what to do: according to many a hawkish move would be not to hike but layer the statement with many caveats how strong the economy is (even as the Fed again chickens out) while the dovish thing would be a “one and done” rate hike with the Fed potentially unleashing a recession-inducing curve inversion.

This post was published at Zero Hedge on 09/17/2015.