The minutes of the April FOMC meeting will be published on Wednesday (18 May 2016) at 1800GMT

via the FT (Fast FT - gated) some quickie preview comments from a few analysts.

In brief...

Joseph LaVorgna (Deutsche Bank):

  • likely to strike a more balanced tone than the dovish meeting statement
  • Various FOMC participants have made comments over the past several weeks emphasizing policy flexibility and the Fed's expectation that output growth will rebound after a soft Q1

LaVorgna expects a hike in December but notes the risk is further delay.

Ethan Harris (Bank of America):

  • How the Committee assesses the risks around growth and what growth pace would be sufficient to support additional hikes would notable
  • So to would be the debate around how much slack remains.
  • An assessment that inflation or inflation expectations have started to improve would also be notable, and mildly hawkish.

James Rossiter (TD Securities):

  • TD expects the tone of this report to be dovish, reflecting the continued uncertainty about the outlook and the cautious approach to policy normalization.

Steven Ricchiuto (Mizuho Securities):

  • The tone of the discussion is apt to be less constructive for the bond market than that experienced since the FOMC abruptly reversed gears in January.
  • Specifically, we know from the post-meeting policy statement that the Committee deemphasized global financial market risks as a constraint on policy decisions when they met in late-April.
  • The decision to again refrain from presenting a balanced risk assessment in the April statement confirms that the hawks didn't move the policy needle that much in April.
  • The data has not added to the rate hike call, especially the jobs data which has disappointed for the past two months.