This report is from today's CNBC Daily Open, our new, international markets newsletter. CNBC Daily Open brings investors up to speed on everything they need to know, no matter where they are. Like what you see? You can subscribe here.
What you need to know today
More hikes, but slower
Almost all Federal Reserve members expect more interest rate hikes at upcoming Federal Open Market Committee meetings, according to minutes of June's meeting. However, most favored a slower pace of hikes. Prior to the June meeting, the Fed had raised rates for 10 consecutive times, with four of them being 0.75 percentage point increases.
Minutes mauled markets
U.S. stocks lost ground on Wednesday while the 10-year Treasury yield jumped more than 7 basis points to 3.934% as investors digested the Fed minutes. Asia-Pacific markets slid Thursday. Hong Kong's Hang Seng index tumbled more than 3%, weighed down by basic materials and health-care stocks. Meanwhile, Foxconn shares sank 2.3% after the company posted a 14% year-over-year drop in second-quarter sales.
Reading the tea leaves in commodities
Global commodities have slumped more than 25% over the last 12 months, according to data from the S&P GSCI Commodities index. Analysts attribute this decline to a weak Chinese economy, which is traditionally a big driver of demand for commodities. Falling commodity prices may also portend a global economic slowdown and imminent recession.
Threads vs Twitter
Meta officially launched Instagram Threads on Wednesday. Threads is a Twitter-like messaging app that lets users post short messages and follow other people. The release of Threads seems timely — Twitter last week limited the number of posts users can view per day, drawing complaints. However, Europe will have to wait — Thread's release in the region was delayed over regulatory concerns.
[PRO] Funds' favorite firms
The S&P 500 surged 15.9% in the first half of the year. If you thought that was impressive, the returns of some actively managed equity funds dwarfed that figure — the top performer posted a return of almost 65%. Their secret? Here are the stocks that appeared most frequently in those funds.
The bottom line
After a year of fighting the Fed, investors, it seems, are starting to listen to what the central bank has to say.
Minutes from June's FOMC meeting showed further rate hikes are in store for the U.S. economy. All but two of the 18 voting Fed officials expected at least one more hike this year, while 12 expected two or more, wrote CNBC's Jeff Cox.
Investors used to believe the Fed would cut rates by the end of this year, despite the central bank's continued hawkish rhetoric. This time, they took the Fed's words at face value. Investors now think that there's a 90.5% chance the Fed will raise rates by 25 basis points at its July 26 meeting, according to the CME FedWatch Tool. That's up from 81.8% a week ago.
More tellingly, only 0.9% of investors think the Fed will cut rates by December.
Markets fell in response. The S&P 500 slipped 0.2%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 0.38% and the Nasdaq Composite declined 0.18%. Both the S&P and Dow broke their three-day winning streaks.
It's not all bad news in the Fed minutes, however. They showed that Fed officials are growing more optimistic that the U.S. could avoid a recession even as rates increase and economic activity slows.
"Given the continued strength in labor market conditions and the resilience of consumer spending, however, the staff saw the possibility of the economy continuing to grow slowly and avoiding a downturn as almost as likely as the mild-recession baseline," according to the minutes.
Look out for Friday's jobs report. That will be the key piece of data showing whether the economy can indeed land softly — or if the Fed will need to engineer a crash landing to stop inflation.
