The Federal Reserve’s almost $9 trillion portfolio is about to be reduced starting on Wednesday, in a process intended to supplement rate hikes and buttress the central bank’s fight against inflation.
While the precise impact of “quantitative tightening” in financial markets is still up for debate, analysts at the Wells Fargo Investment Institute and Capital Economics agree that it’s likely to produce another headwind for stocks. And that’s a dilemma for investors facing multiple risks to their portfolios at the moment, as government bonds sold off and stocks nursed losses on Tuesday.
In a nutshell, “quantitative tightening” is the opposite of “quantitative easing”: It’s basically a way to reduce the money supply floating around in the economy and, some say, helps to augment rate hikes in a predictable manner — though, by how much remains unclear. And it may turn out to be anything but as dull as “watching paint dry,” as Janet Yellen described it when she was Fed chair in 2017 — the last time when the central bank initiated a similar process.
Vivien Lou Chen | MarketWatch