The Federal Reserve will make its much-anticipated announcement on whether it will hike interest rates for the first time in around nine years at 2:00 p.m. ET on Wednesday.
This will be followed by a press conference at 2.30, which will be streamed live and can be followed here.
Investors and the markets are expecting the Federal Reserve to increase rates, and are prepared for an initial 25 basis point “liftoff” that would move the Fed’s target rate from the zero lower bound to a range of between 0.25 and 0.50 percentage points, reported Reuters.
Futures company CME Group, which tracks the Fed Fund future prices and puts out estimates on the probability of a rate hike, has pegged the latest estimate at an 81% chance the rate is going up in December.
Nine of the 10 main sectors in the S&P 500 are also trading higher in anticipation of a rate hike, according to MarketWatch, with sentiment that an improving economy is paving the way for the rate increase.
“It is a foregone conclusion that the Fed is going to raise rates,” Kully Samra, a managing director at U.S. focused investment manager Charles Schwab, told Reuters.
