The Federal Reserve released its July meeting minutes today. And while there’s often a lot of noise in the meetings (and this one was no exception), the key takeaway ultimately hasn’t changed. 🔑
The Federal Reserve will keep hiking rates until the core measures of inflation show meaningful progress towards their 2% long-term rate.
So far, we’ve not seen that. And as a reminder, the committee doesn’t make decisions based on volatile headline numbers, so don’t get your hopes up just because oil has sold off.
We’ve talked about inflation this summer more than any human should, so we’ll leave it at that.
In the meantime, Europe managed to avoid a recession in Q2. The preliminary read on Eurozone GDP rose 0.6% QoQ and 3.90% YoY, though it’s not yet out of the wood. 😮💨
The continent is facing a whole host of issues like an energy/food crisis, record temperatures and droughts, the war in Ukraine, and many other things hampering their economy. Some countries are managing better than others, but structurally there are a lot of issues facing this region of the world. Hence, many analysts expect this growth reading to be the last positive one for a while. 🚩
And to wrap up our economic news, headline U.S. retail sales were flat in July. Dropping gasoline prices freed up spending money for other goods, as core retail sales rose 0.8%. 🛍️