Fed Decision Arrives Wednesday at 2 p.m. Eastern Time

The market-moving moment comes Wednesday, May 7, at 2 p.m. Eastern time, when the Federal Reserve is scheduled to release its latest interest-rate decision.

The Federal Open Market Committee’s meeting runs Tuesday and Wednesday, May 6-7, according to the Fed’s official calendar. The statement will arrive at 2 p.m. ET, followed by Chair Jerome Powell’s news conference at 2:30 p.m. Investors in Chicago should watch at 1 p.m. Central, while the release lands at 11 a.m. Pacific.

The decision is expected to be uneventful on the rate front. The Fed has held its benchmark federal funds target in a range of 4.25% to 4.50% since December, and market pricing heading into the meeting pointed overwhelmingly toward another pause. The March meeting also produced a slower pace of balance-sheet runoff, reducing the monthly cap on Treasury redemptions from $25 billion to $5 billion beginning in April.

That leaves Powell’s remarks as the more important event for markets. Investors want clues about how officials are weighing two competing risks: tariffs and weaker growth on one side, and renewed inflation pressure on the other. A central bank that sounds more concerned about prices may push Treasury yields higher and rate-cut expectations lower. A sharper warning about employment or demand would do the opposite.

Recent data have given policymakers room to wait. Employers added 177,000 jobs in April, according to the Labor Department’s latest report, while the unemployment rate held at 4.2%. Economists surveyed before the meeting generally expected the Fed to remain on hold while it gathered more evidence about the economic effects of the Trump administration’s trade policies.

There is no new set of quarterly economic projections scheduled for this meeting, so traders will focus on the statement’s wording and Powell’s answers. The key question is not simply whether rates change Wednesday. It is whether the Fed still sounds patient, or whether uncertainty has begun to narrow its options.