Expansion of the U.S. economy for the fourth quarter of last year and moderating inflationary pressures led the Fed to choose a less aggressive stance. Hence, the central bank hiked rates by 0.25 percentage points. This revived investor optimism.
However, Fed Chair Jerome Powell has been clear about policymakers’ North Star: Getting inflation down to their 2% target. Signaling further rate hikes, he expressed cautious optimism, “We’re going to be cautious about declaring victory and sending signals that we think the game is won, because we’ve got a long way to go.”
In addition, some strategists anticipate that persistent rate hikes could tip the economy into recession. However, on the brighter side, with the economy performing better than expected, experts believe the economy is far away from recession.
Against this backdrop, investors might want to add these fundamentally strong stocks to your portfolio to garner good returns in the foreseeable future.
This post originally appeared at StockNews.com.