Are Today's Fed Minutes a Big Deal?

There's a reason we haven't been mentioning this week's release of the Fed Minutes as we lament the absence of significant scheduled market movers.  Simply put, we're largely past the phase of the rate hike cycle where the minutes can tell us any more about the Fed's outlook than the Fed can tell us itself via speeches, press conferences, etc.  Of course, there can always be a brief, volatile reaction to any Fed communication, but it would be quite surprising to see this particular event doing anything to reshape the rate narrative in any meaningful way. 

We know the Fed is "done hiking unless the economic data and inflation metrics pick back up in a way that suggests more tightening is needed."  And even then, the Fed would then have to weigh the extent to which sufficient tightening may already be in the pipeline.  Long story short, we're not expecting any fireworks, and even if we see a few, we're not expecting them to start any fires.

To be perfectly fair and balanced with respect to our "narrow range" outlook for the week, it's worth noting that the narrowest version of the range has given way to a slightly wider version as yields press back toward last Friday's lows.  This doesn't really change the gist of "sideways and less volatile" ahead of the next big round of data, but it does mean we get to wait things out at levels that are even better than hoped.