Replaying 2022 or Repeating 1997? A Rate Hike Is Nearly Certain, but the Real Uncertainty for US Stocks Has Just Begun

Odaily News: After US August core CPI inflation heated up again, expectations for a Federal Reserve rate hike in September rose rapidly. As a rate hike this week becomes a high-probability event, the market's focus has shifted to "how US stocks will move after the rate hike."

Jeff Buchbinder, Chief Equity Strategist at LPL Financial, analyzed six Fed tightening cycles since 1994, and the results show that the S&P 500 usually performs weakly in the short term after the first rate hike, but outcomes one year later are notably better than in the initial months.

Compared with 2022, LPL believes the underlying conditions facing the US economy amid rate hikes are clearly different now, and the current macroeconomic environment is closer to the late 1990s. However, that does not mean the 1997 market scenario will reappear. LPL previously estimated that even if the Fed continues to tighten monetary policy this cycle, the overall scale of tightening is unlikely to approach the level seen from 2022 to 2023. In the previous cycle, the Fed raised rates by a cumulative 5.25 percentage points, equivalent to 21 consecutive 25-basis-point hikes. (Investopedia)