FOMC Meeting Minutes
In short, the minutes appear to point to no rate cut at this month’s FOMC meeting but a reasonable chance of one coming at the September meeting, depending on what inflation and other economic data show in the meantime. Even though there are 19 members participating in the meeting, only twelve have voting rights. The minutes showed the vote to leave key rates unchanged last month was unanimous, meaning there has to be a big change in opinions for the Fed to cut rates later this month and last week’s Employment report certainly did not help do that. Still, after the minutes were released, we saw bond prices make another move higher (lower yields). This led to quite a few lenders issuing an intraday improvement to mortgage pricing, allowing us to label the report as good news for rates.