Goldman, Deutsche, TD Take Minutes Cue From Powell's Comments

Goldman Sachs sees the March FOMC minutes through the prism of Powell's press conference as hinting strongly at the start of balance sheet reduction in May. "Powell also said that the minutes to the March meeting will reveal some of the key parameters of the balance sheet reduction process, and that it will be faster than last cycle but will otherwise look 'very familiar.'"

• Deutsche - which expects the final QT plan to be unveiled in May for a June launch - points to the same Powell hints, adding that he had "noted that the framework that the Committee had discussed would add roughly 25bps of additional monetary tightening this year."
• TD sees QT as the focus: "The market will be sensitive to caps, the phase-in period, and talk about assets sales. We think that the market is pricing in some QT but without key implementation details, we don't know if the increase in duration supply to the private market is adequately priced in."