The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) members may have said time and again that they could hike rates at their October meeting, but the markets have not believed them. And with nobody expecting a rate hike today. The Fed certainly will not want to wrong-foot the markets in the current environment.
However, it will have to become more explicit in its communications if it wants to hike rates at any time in the future. Nevertheless, it is unlikely that it will clearly signal a rate hike in December today, as doing so would undermine its mantra of "data-dependency". The USD exchange rate will depend on what the Fed statement says on the recently weaker data.
"If the Fed believes that the US economy is still recovering nicely, the USD might trade somewhat firmer after the meeting, as the markets are currently overly cautious and predicting a rate hike only for March 2016. The Fed will certainly not sound even more pessimistic today. Rather, it might cautiously hint at approaching rate hikes. However, that will not be enough to justify EUR-USD to break out of its trading range of 1.08-1.15", says Commerzbank.
