57% Of Financial Professionals Say Fed Made A Mistake; 80% Still Confident In Fed Hot
By an overwhelming majority, 80% of financial professionals expressed confidence in the Fed, according to an A4A poll conducted after a surprising 5% recovery on Wednesday, and a 19.8% bear market plunge from the all-time closing high of September 20. The volatility fueled tax selling by large institutions, extending the selloff.
This poll was taken at A4A’s best-attended CE webinar ever, on Wednesday, December 26. Planned by Fritz and me on Monday, December 24, in the depths of the Christmas Eve plunge, the surprising 5% surge on Wednesday took the edge off.
Unfazed, Fritz Meyer delivered a sober assessment of the yield curve sudden flattening and singled out the Fed’s decision for criticism.
Jerome Powell is the third Fed Reserve chair Fritz Meyer and I have covered together. Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen used central banking tactics never tried before on the world’s largest economy to rescue the U.S. from the global credit crisis of 2008. Yet Fritz never called out those two Fed chiefs for a policy mistake.
Friotz Meyer’s sharp rebuke of Mr. Powell’s decision to raise Fed Funds December 19 was unusual. Fritz faulted the Fed for not listening to the markets. Tempering his criticism, Fritz said the Fed chair learned a lesson and Fritz expects softer policy to be forthcoming.
It raised a question. Do financial professionals think the Fed made a mistake?
Given the large number of attendees at this breaking news CE webinar, the significance of the results of this poll is that 80% of A4A members —CFP®, along with CPA/PFS, and CIMA® professionals, remained confident in the Fed. However, 57% said the Fed made a policy mistake by raising rates.
The 37% of those polled who say the Fed made a mistake but that it was not such a big one, combined with those who say the Fed made no mistake total 80% of A4A’s members, a statistically significant group of highly informed financial advisors, expressed confidence in the Fed.
A4A members pay $10 a month to support our news feed. We’re a source of breaking news analysis from thought leaders, Fritz Meyer, an independent economist famous for his factual common sense analysis, along with tax and financial planning expert Robert Keebler, CPA/PFS, and Craig Israelsen, Ph.D., a low-expense portfolio design and quantitative analyst.
