US Fed holds rates steady for sixth straight time

The Federal Reserve headquarters

The Federal Reserve kept interest rates between 5.25% and 5.50% for the sixth consecutive time since raising borrowing costs in July 2023.
 

"The (Federal Open Market Committee) does not expect it will be appropriate to reduce the target range until it has gained greater confidence that inflation is moving sustainably towards 2%," the Fed repeated in a unanimously-approved statement that still indicated the next move on rates will be down.
 

The statement maintained its overall assessment of economic growth, saying that the economy "continued to expand at a solid pace. Job gains have remained strong and the unemployment rate has remained low."
 

The US central bank also announced it will scale back the pace at which it is shrinking its balance sheet starting on June 1, allowing only $25 billion in Treasury bonds to run off each month versus the current $60 billion.
 

This is the seventh time the Fed maintained the rates since the start of the current tightening cycle in March 2022, during which the bank raised borrowing costs by 525 basis points, marking the strictest cycle in four decades.
 

Markets are anticipating the press conference that will be held by Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, to know the date of cutting rates, after they reached their highest levels in nearly 23 years.