Federal Reserve policy makers agreed to raise their benchmark lending rate for the third time in six months, maintained their outlook for one more hike in 2017. Not only that the Fed set out some details for how they intend to shrink their $4.5 trillion balance sheet this year.
The Fed raised its benchmark lending rate by a quarter percentage point to a target range of 1.00 percent to 1.25 percent. The Fed also seemed to largely brush off a recent run of terrible economic data and raised into weakness anyway. There was no mention of retail sales, construction, housing or any of the other string of 18 poor hard data economic points in the second quarter.
Look out below in housing, commercial real estate and auto’s: