Fed Jawboning And Market Performance

Here’s a reprint of something we discussed on the main site earlier this year.  It’s as relevant now as it was in February…

Mr. Bernanke is now scheduled to speak before Congress in the Semiannual Monetary Policy Report to the Congress.

We’ve discussed this event several times over the years, but it’s worth touching on again, as we have seen some pretty consistent market action surrounding these speeches.

The day before the Fed Chair’s testimony to Congress, the S&P 500 has been up nearly 70% of the time.  But the day of the prepared remarks, it was up 44% of the time, and the day after it was up only 28% of the time (7 out of 25 occurrences).

For some reason, these meetings have an uncanny tendency to occur very near market inflection points, with the market moving substantially in the other direction from the move preceding the testimony.  The chart below highlights these meetings (the gray vertical lines) superimposed on a chart of the S&P 500.

If the S&P 500 was negative over the month prior to the testimony, then the month following the meeting it was up 8 out of 10 times with an average return of a respectable +2.3%, though the risk/reward over the next month was about evenly distributed (-3.8% to +3.9%).

However, if the S&P was positive heading into the meeting, then the following month also showed a positive return only 13% of the time (2 out of 15 instances) and an average return of -2.8%.  The risk/reward was extremely skewed to the downside (-5.9% to +1.6%).  The last 12 occurrences, dating back to 1998, were all negative.