US inflation is persisting at near multi-month highs while the US economy is slowing down, but that doesn’t matter for US stock markets. Neither does the repeated warnings from Federal Reserve policymakers that more rate hikes are coming over the next few months. Instead, US equity markets are taking a longer-term perspective: inflation will eventually slow, forcing the Fed to pivot away from rate hikes to a neutral stance in early-2023, before rate cuts arrive in the second half of 2023.
For now, things seem sanguine for risk appetite after the July US inflation report showed an unexpected deceleration in price pressures. US equity markets are now more than +20% off of their yearly lows, signaling the end of the bear market that defined much of 2022 and ushering in a new bull market altogether. While several technical hurdles have been cleared along the way, it’s also worth noting that complacency is starting to creep into the picture.