Quick Fed preview/Gushing over AI/'consumers shopping episodically'/Other stuff

The FOMC statement has typically been similar to the prior one and today will likely be no different. Powell has tended to sound more dovish at the presser, only for it to be pulled back in the days after by others. He's previously expressed, as we know, the need for more 'confidence' on the further, 'sustainable' deceleration in inflation while keeping a close eye on the slow creep up in the unemployment rate and I don't think he feels he's yet found that confidence and thus won't commit to the timing of an eventual first rate cut, even though he's looking for any reason I believe. I also don't think he's tempted by the tweak lower of interest rates by some of his peers. And as for now, it seems to be more of a tweak rather than the beginning of a string of consistent rate cuts. As for the dots, which we know the market algos will kick in the second they are released, I don't expect them to deviate much from what the market is currently pricing in. And that is, 100% chance of one cut this year and 38% chance of a 2nd. As for what the dots will say about 2025, their crystal ball is no different than yours. 

While mortgage rates didn't move much w/o/w, down 5 bps, refi's exploded higher by 28.4% w/o/w which I can't explain. Again, assume most are cash outs. After falling in 10 out of the last 12 weeks, purchase applications rebounded by 8.6% w/o/w. 

Average 30 yr mortgage rate according to Bankrate

While Oracle missed both top and bottom line numbers for their Q4, they were just gushing on their conference call on the AI opportunity and gave all the buzz words Wall Street loves right now. "As you know, Oracle's Q4 is known for customers purchasing large software license contracts to power their businesses. But because of the pivot to the cloud, this Q4 was powered by the enormous demand for our cloud services and they showed up in RPO or Remaining Performance Obligations."

"In Q4, Oracle signed the largest sales contract in our history led by huge demand for training large language models."