The Federal Reserve left its target rate unchanged at a 4.25%-4.50% range in yesterday’s policy announcement.  Following the decision, Fed funds futures are pricing in an 82% probability that the central bank will continue to leave rates unchanged at the next FOMC meeting on March 19. Meanwhile, President Trump on Wednesday said the central bank “failed to stop the problem they created with inflation” and have done a “terrible job on bank regulation.”

The US trade deficit in goods deepened to a record in December. “It seems reasonable to think that a substantial share is due to attempts to import raw materials before prices potentially jump after the imposition of new tariffs,” says Oliver Allen, senior US economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics.

The eurozone economy was stagnant in the fourth quarter, according to flash data from the European Union’s statistics agency Eurostat. The result is worse than expected. A Reuters poll of Economists projects 0.1% growth in Q4, down from a 0.4% in Q3.

Meta reported better-than-expected revenue and net profit for Q4. The strong results come as the company is planning for a huge increase in AI-fueled capital spending in 2025. Reuters reports: “Days after Chinese upstart DeepSeek revealed a breakthrough in cheap AI computing that shook the US technology industry, the chief executives of Microsoft and Meta defended massive spending that they said was key to staying competitive in the new field.”

The US stock market roared higher again in 2024, but it wasn’t due to the size or value equity risk factors, according to Dartmouth University Professor Ken French’s data library. Reviewing the numbers, a research note from TMC Research, a division of The Milwaukee Company, reports: “The US equity market premium surged 19.8% last year via daily data. By contrast, the size and value premia lost 7.9% and 7.2%, respectively, in 2024. The Fama-French 3 Factor Model (FF3), in short, delivered mixed results during what was a strong year for stocks generally.”