The Fed delivers another jumbo rate rise, and it’s far from done

the start of June investors and analysts believed that a “jumbo” interest-rate rise for the Federal Reserve meant half a percentage point. How quaint. After four straight increases of three-quarters of a percentage point—the latest on November 2nd—perceptions have changed. Indeed, a stockmarket rally in the two weeks before the announcement was rooted in the belief that the Fed may scale down to a half-point rate increase at its next meeting in December. What was once jumbo is now moderate.Whether the Fed will in fact downshift to a half-point increase is a matter for debate. Bond pricing assigns roughly even odds to the central bank opting for that smaller increment versus yet another three-quarter-point increase. At a news conference following the Fed’s latest move, Jerome Powell, the central bank’s chairman, resisted tipping his hand in either direction. And for good reason: inflation figures for both October and November will be published before the Fed’s next meeting, and go a long way to determining what it does. There is little sense in guessing the outcome before seeing that data.