Stocks Already Back Where They Were Before Powell’s Hawkish Tilt

(Bloomberg) -- While the S&P 500 Index hasn’t quite gotten to the levels that prevailed before the emergence of the omicron variant, it’s come close. And it has now surpassed the closing price on Nov. 29, the day before Jerome Powell made his hawkish remarks.

There has been a bit of chatter recently that “Powell turned hawkish at exactly the wrong time.” But this sort of price action hardly bears that out. Then again, it does seem fair to observe that the market is a little skeptical that the Fed will be as hawkish as was thought before Thanksgiving. The S&P has pretty much returned to the peak, but yields on December 2024 eurodollars are still some 15 bps lower than they were on Nov. 2.

Who said you can’t have your cake (or Christmas cookie) and eat it, too?

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