Adam Taggart | Thoughtful Money, Released on 6/13/24 (Recorded on 6/12/24)

In its latest guidance released this week, the Federal Reserve is holding interest rates steady for now. The Federal Funds rate will remain unchanged at 5.25% But the Fed did lower its rate cut forecast for 2024 to just 1. And it raised its 2025 rate cut expectations upwards from 3 to 4. It largely did this because its outlook on inflation is notably more optimistic than in previous months. Wall Street certainly liked what it heard, with the S&P jumping over 1% on the news and Treasury yields falling. But does this slightly more optimistic view actually change anything? To find out, we sat down right after Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s press conference with fund manager & Fed watcher Axel Merk to get his real-time assessment.

Axel Merk is the Founder, President, Portfolio Manager, and CIO at Merk Investments LLC. He is an expert on qualitative research and macroeconomic trends. Mr. Merk is also an expert on macro trends, hard money, international investing, and on building sustainable wealth, and he is a pioneer in the use of strategic currency investing to seek diversification. He is a speaker and author on topics ranging from the economy, gold, and currencies to sustainable wealth and personal finance, as well as a regular guest and contributor to the business media around the world. Mr. Merk is an Author of the book Sustainable Wealth: Achieve Financial Security in a Volatile World of Debt and Consumption.

Adam Taggart is the Founder of  Thoughtful Money. He is also Co-Founder and former President of Peak Prosperity. Adam is an experienced Silicon Valley internet executive and Stanford MBA. Prior to partnering with Chris Martenson (Adam was General Manager of our earlier site, ChrisMartenson.com), he was a Vice President at Yahoo!, a company he served for nine years. Before that, he did the ‘startup thing’ (mySimon.com, sold to CNET in 2001). As a fresh-faced graduate from Brown University in the early 1990s, Adam got a first-hand look at all that was broken with Wall Street as an investment banking analyst for Merrill Lynch. Most importantly, he’s a devoted husband and dad.

  federal reserve, interest rates, investing