For most of the year everyone from stockpickers and homebuyers to President Joe Biden has banked on the Federal Reserve cutting interest rates soon. Over the past two weeks those hopes have been dashed. Annual consumer price inflation in March, at 3.5%, was higher than expected for the third month in a row; retail sales grew by a boomy 0.7% on the previous month. On April 16th Jerome Powell, the Fed’s chairman, warned that the battle against inflation was taking “longer than expected”. Investors had begun 2024 pricing in more than 1.5 percentage points of interest-rate cuts over the course of the year. Today they expect rates to fall by only 0.5 points.
今年大部分时间里，从选股人和购房者到乔-拜登总统，每个人都寄希望于美联储很快降息。过去两周，这些希望破灭了。3 月份的年度消费物价通胀率为 3.5%，连续第三个月高于预期；零售销售额较上月增长了 0.7%，增长乏力。4 月 16 日，美联储主席杰罗姆-鲍威尔（Jerome Powell）警告说，与通胀作斗争的时间 "比预期的要长"。2024 年伊始，投资者曾预计年内降息超过 1.5 个百分点。如今，他们预计利率只会下降 0.5 个百分点。
