It's the moment you've all been waiting for... Yellen time!

Get the coffee on as Janet Yellen gives testimony to the Joint Economic Committee

Yellen in front of the politicians is always one of my favourite events. #sarcasm

Today she"s up before the Joint Economic Committee at 15.00 GMT. However, we"ll get to see her testimony when it"s released at 13.00 GMT.

The market will be looking at this first for any clues to the Dec FOMC and how close they might be to hiking. The market is currently 94% certain (as per Fed funds futures probability) that a hike is coming, so the risk is that there are comments that counter that. Following that, attention will switch to when she"s questioned at the testimony.

US interest rate probabilities

As we can see from the chart, we"ve had a strong rise since the election, which obviously tells us that there was plenty of money waiting until that was out the way before getting back into Fed hike trades. That"s also been a big factor behind the rise in the dollar.

As I"ve just mentioned, the risk now is that because the market is all leaning one way, anything that suggests a Dec hike isn"t on the table is going to hit the buck harder than if we get comments that it is. Remember that we"re only expecting a 25bp hike in the FFR range and that"s not going to be worth all that much to the dollar. What will be more important is the message that comes with any hike but anyway, that"s for December, not now.

Yellen very rarely strays from the Fed/FOMC rhetoric path and when we have seen the price move, it"s because she"s been pressured or slipped and has been forced to give an answer outside of that path. If there"s one thing to look out for outside of monetary policy, it will be questions on the election, which could put her in one of those tricky situations where she has one of her stuttering moments.

Unfortunately we"ve often had to sit through hours of monotonous droning while hoping to get something like that.

There is normally plenty of places to watch live but here"s a couple to use if you need to.

Captiol Hearings has a stream (might just be audio).

CSPAN will have it too.

If there are any other streams will dig them up and add them in.

Will Yellen be in the driving seat at this hearing?

It"s the moment you"ve all been waiting for... Yellen time!
It"s the moment you"ve all been waiting for... Yellen time!
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