Fed hikes rates and plans for balance sheet normalisation

As widely expected, the Fed raised its policy rate target by an additional 25bp today, to between 1.00% and 1.25% and, despite the recent weakness of core inflation, Fed officials still expect to raise that rate once more in the second half of this year. The Fed also laid out plans for shrinking its balance sheet, with the initial run-off even smaller than we had previously expected, although it offered no specifics on the timing of when that normalisation would begin other than "this year".