US FOMC (Fed) Meeting 2023 Today: Check time & expected hike; know when interest rate cuts are expected

US fed rate hike latest update: The stage is set for the first Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting slated to be held on January 31-February 1, 2023. The meeting is of great interest to stock market players across the world. The announcement of the interest rate hikes by the Fed will be made on February 1 at 2:00 PM ET or 12:30 AM on February 2 as per IST. For a second consecutive meeting, the US Federal Reserve is expected to raise interest by a quarter percentage point. The US Fed earlier resorted to a modest interest rate hike of 50 basis point increase in December after 4 consecutive interest rate hikes of 75 basis points.  FOMC meets at least 8 times a year, with additional meetings also lined up as required. 

Investors around the world, including in Asia and Europe, are looking for hints about how much interest rate hike will be announced by the Fed in the face of rising inflation. The Stoxx 600 index for all of Europe dropped 0.2 per cent at the closing, with the majority of sectors trading down. Food and beverage stocks finished 0.7 per cent higher, while the IT sector saw the worst decline, falling 1.7 per cent. The same trend was visible across American and Asian stocks.

The Fed won’t cut interest rates until and unless inflation in the US gets under control. A substantial development towards achieving the 2 per cent inflation target should be visible to get US Fed to cut interest rates. Analysts believe that we won’t be able to see interest rate cuts before Q4 2023 or early Q1 2024. Financial Express quoted Kavan Choksi, a successful investor, business management, and wealth consultant at KC Consulting, as saying that the US might enter a recession in 2023 as the Fed won’t cut interest rates that might trigger counter-productive results for the skyrocketing inflation in the country.