Independence Day 2019: Does the US really need a rate cut?

Dovish shift in Fed policy as economic data deteriorates

US equities have seen a strong start to 2019, with the main S&P 500 index up almost 17%, compounding recent years of outperformance of other developed market indices.

With the US economy still in reasonable shape, but showing some signs of slowing, can this trend continue? We have seen the US economic data deteriorate over the past six months but, so far at least, the decline in the data suggests that growth is slowing to between 1% and 2% rather than anything worse. History tells us economic expansions tend to come to an end as a result of a shock, or more likely, too much central bank tightening. Has this already happened? There is an argument that while US rates have ‘only' risen to 2.25% to 2.5%, the starting point for this hiking cycle was ver...