The Federal Reserve's role in financial markets has grown too large, legendary investor Jim Grant said Tuesday.
"Let's conceive that we are not investors but rather basketball players, and the game's about to be televised and … here's a final and all [people] can talk about is the referee," Grant, the founder and editor of Grant's Interest Rate Observer, told CNBC's "."
"The Federal Reserve has come to occupy the anomalous place of the referee who dominates, overshadows and is in utter control of the game that he or she is intended to be merely supervising," he said.
On Monday, Fed Chair Janet Yellen said the central bank needs to raise interest rates but at a gradual pace, adding that, while the May jobs report was concerning, "one should never attach too much significance to any single monthly report."
Equity markets across the globe rallied on the heels of her remarks, with the pan-European Stoxx 600 index gaining 1 percent Tuesday, while Asian stocks rose broadly overnight.
In the U.S., the Dow Jones industrial average briefly broke above the psychologically important 18,000 level for the first time since April.