All Eyes on Fed, With Hopes for ‘Powell Put’

Good morning contrarians! Welcome to the Daily Contrarian, our morning look at events likely to move markets. It is Wednesday, June 18, 2025. Fed Day.

State of Play

As we eye or board of indicators for signs of direction at 0840 ET, there are no indications of geopolitical concerns as focus turns to the Federal Reserve’s interest rate policy decision this afternoon:

• Stock index futures are effectively unchanged with no major US index moving more than 0.2% from the break-even point;

• Commodities, too, are quiet. WTI crude oil is up 0.5% to trade around $73.50/barrel. Copper is up 0.7%, encouragingly enough. Gold and silver are unchanged;

• Cryptos aren’t moving either. Bitcoin is down <1% to trade around $104,700;

• Bonds are seeing a few bids. The 10-year yield is down 3 basis points to 4.36% (yields move inversely to prices).

Cover art by author via Grok AI (not a real photo)