FOMC not so important this month

The Federal Open Market Committee releases minutes from its last meeting on Wednesday afternoon, but Wall Street is already downplaying the event as a sideshow in comparison to an annual symposium on monetary policy in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, two days later.

“The FOMC minutes are telling us about what happened three weeks ago, and Jackson Hole, given its precedent for signaling meaningful policy shifts, has taken on this very elevated status; it gets that extra attention even if it is just an academic conference,” said Jeff Greenberg, senior economist at J.P. Morgan Private Bank.

While investors will parse Wednesday’s minutes for clues as to when the Fed will start hiking interest rates, “the real look ahead for any hints as to monetary policy is Jackson Hole,” said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at Wunderlich Securities.

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