Fed’s Evans: No clear playbook for timeline between taper and first hike

“The current inflation spike shouldn't push the Federal Reserve to tighten monetary policy prematurely, with more months of labor data needed before any changes as well as more certainty that the pace of price increases will remain above the Fed's 2% target,” said Chicago Fed President Charles Evans said on Tuesday, per Reuters.

Additional comments (from Reuters)

We are making progress ... We are well on our way.

The benchmark for that bond ‘taper’ is likely to be met ‘later this year’ based on expected strong continued job growth.

wanted to see ‘a few more’ monthly employment jobs reports before feeling enough progress had been made to start curtailing the emergency programs put in place to get the economy through the pandemic.

Everybody is wondering about September, November, December, January.

I don't think that one meeting on either side is going to have an important effect.

What's more important is for the Fed to follow through on the new framework it adopted last year, and prove it is serious about reaching maximum employment and achieving an inflation rate that averages 2% over time.

I am going to be very regretful if we sort of claim victory on averaging 2% and then find ourselves in 2023 with about a 1.8% inflation rate ... That would be a challenge for our long-run framework.

Going forward employment is going to be good. 

Inflation continues to be something that is going to have to behave differently over the next couple of years than it has over the last 10.

Market reaction

With mixed comments, lacking taper signals, S&P 500 Futures fail to react to the news while staying mostly unchanged around the 4,428 after refreshing the record on Wall Street.

Read: Wall Street Close: Nasdaq, coronavirus probe bulls cheering stimulus news