(MarketWatch) Between an attack on Saudi Arabia’s oil and a credit crunch disrupting short-term money markets, there has been a lot to chew on this week. That’s as a Federal Reserve decision looms for later.
The Fed is pegged to cut rates 25 basis points. Investors will be listening up for future policy hints and its thoughts on oil prices and maybe on this scarcity of cash issue. As for the latter, investment firm Blackstone’s vice chairman Tony James, is among those trying to calm the waters.
“The rate spike looks very scary, but it’s only overnight. The actual cost to the system is not high, it’s more of a concern for dealers,” James told Bloomberg TV. The Fed is planning another operation to inject cash into the system Wednesday after a $75 billion operation on Tuesday.
Onto our call of the day from Liz Ann Sonders, chief investment strategist at Charles Schwab, who warns investors are sleepwalking when it comes to one area of the global economy.
“I think that there may be a bit too much complacency about inflation and interest rates staying low,” Sonders tells MarketWatch in an interview. “I’ve always had the view that we should be as least as intrigued by the story no one’s telling as by the story everyone is telling.”
The Fed has a mandate to keep prices stable, which right now isn’t a problem, but should it become one, interest rate hikes come back into the spotlight. Financial markets and investors have grown pretty comfortable with the idea of central banks stimulating economies rather than slowing them down.
“Even if we’re not going headline into 1970s runaway inflation, hyperinflation, stagflation, I just think consensus became so convinced inflation here and globally was dead and buried forever, that even a slight adjustment in that trajectory and the implications that would have for monetary policy is something that’s not being digested well enough,” says Sonders.
She also worries about a global manufacturing recession, a trade war and the fact markets can get jolted by a single tweet — as we’ve seen when President Trump fires off some zingers. Sonders says a neutral position on global stocks — where Schwab has been for about two years — may be the safest place for investors.
“I think it’s a treacherous environment right now to make a huge bet in either direction, either on the extreme optimistic side or on the pessimistic side because we’re in this stage right now where the needle can go either way. The best advice we can give in this environment of uncertainty is stay at your normal allocation, but use the swings to rebalance,” says Sonders.
