The Federal Reserve release is at 2:00 pm EDT today. Interestingly, the S&P 500 is not too far from where it was trading on June 19th (when it was around 1655), the last FOMC release date. There has been a lot of price action in the interim, but we’re close to the same place today.
Since today’s news could be a major catalyst for macro moves, I wanted to do a quick recap of the performance of major macro assets year-to-date in 2013, all in U.S. Dollar terms:
Stock indices:
- S&P 500 – Up 18.2%
- Euro Stoxx 50 – Up 5.0%
- Nikkei – Up 16.7%
- Hang Seng – Down 3.5%
- Bovespa – Down 28.3%
Bonds:
- TLT – Down 11.5%
- LQD – Down 5.3%
- HYG – Down 0.7%
- EMB – Down 10.4%
Currencies:
- Euro – Up 0.5%
- Yen – Down 11.3%
- Pound – Down 6.5%
- Aussie Dollar – Down 13.2%
- Canadian Dollar – Down 3.6%
Commodities:
- Gold – Down 20.8%
- Silver – Down 35.2%
- WTI Crude Oil – Up 11.2%
- Brent Crude Oil – Down 4.0%
- Copper – Down 15.6%
- Natural Gas – Up 2.6%
- Corn – Down 29.8%
Some divergences within asset classes, but broadly speaking, stocks up, bonds down, dollar up, commodities down. Will today’s news mark any reversals in those year-to-date trends? As always, we’ll only know in hindsight.