On June 17, Walsh announced that the Federal Reserve would no longer provide forward guidance on interest rates and directly abandoned submitting its dot plot. In other words, they won’t be giving the market advance notice about potential interest rate changes anymore, but will instead adjust rates more flexibly based on real-time data. Then, on July 1, Walsh spoke again, emphasizing that the Fed will focus on current economic data to decide future policies. These two speeches are basically telling the market: stop worrying about predictions for how many times rates will be raised or lowered this year—that stuff doesn’t matter anymore. Data will speak for itself. Right after that, on July 2, yesterday’s non-farm payroll data came out, and it was far below expectations at 110,000—only half of that, 57,000. This perfectly aligns with Walsh’s policy of focusing on short-term real-time data to decide interest rates, directly supporting rate cuts. Looks like the new chairman Walsh is one of us after all. Maybe the second half of the year will be a bit easier for us