Will the Jackson Hole event be bearish for stocks?

I’ve been seeing many posts about the stock market reaction to the last two Powell’s speeches at the Jackson Hole Symposium.

While it’s true that the market didn’t perform well in the following couple of months, the context today is much different.

In 2022, it goes without saying why it was different. The Fed was still in the middle of its hiking cycle and Powell delivered a very hawkish message.

In 2023, it wasn’t actually the Jackson Hole event that triggered the weakness. It was first the hot CPI on Thursday 14th and then the much more hawkish than expected FOMC on Wednesday 20th.

Even without those two catalysts in 2023, the market diverged pretty strongly from real yields and eventually it just caught up to the reality before bottoming out and resuming the rally into the December’s Fed pivot.

Right now, we are actually entering the easing cycle with resilient growth which is a strong tailwind for stocks as that should depress real yields and boost economic activity.

So, while we can’t know for sure how the market’s going to perform in the next couple of months, I’d say that this time a rally is more likely.

This article was written by Giuseppe Dellamotta at www.forexlive.com.