Powell's press conference suggests the FOMC is broadly not on board with how heavily priced a December rate cut had become. Powell: "Strongly differing views about how to proceed in December." A December cut is "not to be seen as a forgone conclusion. In fact, far from it." This goes beyond the typical disclaimer that policy is not on a preset path and a clear effort to wrest back some optionality to avoid getting dragged into doing any particular thing. What if there's no government data to reconcile the picture? A “very high level of uncertainty, that could be an argument in favor of caution about moving.”(Nick Timiraos)