Thursday, January 20, 2022

Interactive Brokers Founder Thomas Peterffy: "If the Fed wanted to stop inflation, it would need to hike rates to nearly 6%"

From Yahoo Finance:

Interactive Brokers founder Thomas Peterffy says he is worried about the higher interest rates coming soon from a Federal Reserve behind the curve on inflation

"I am worried about high interest rates because the Fed is talking about raising rates to 1% or even 2%. Inflation is 7% — 1% or 2% doesn't mean anything. If they really wanted to stop inflation, they would have to raise rates to 4%, 5%, 6%," Peterffy said on Yahoo Finance Live.

Peterffy thinks the Fed wouldn't go that high on rates (yet) as it would add new deficit spending as servicing costs on the country's ballooning debt would rise. More money would then likely circulate into the economy, and put more upward pressure on inflation, Peterffy reasons.

"I think they [the Fed] are in a box. They can't raise rates much above 1% or 2%, and inflation can stay up there for a long time and people will get used to that and it will become endemic. So that is the reason for my fears," added Peterffy....

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Well that's the plan right? I mean we've gotten the inflation the Fed has been working toward for years, they aren't going to throw this accomplishment away.

Switching topics, although I've never met Mr. Peterffy he seems pretty together:
"Billionaire who once built robots to trade goes to war with them" (IBKR)
Peterffy is an interesting guy. a couple of our links after the jump.*

*Despite most of his $18 billion net worth being due to Interactive Brokers, he was looking to stop the Federales calling time on the game, here's his speed bump suggestion via a June 2014 post:
Want To Curtail High Frequency Trading Abuse? Randomly Delay Orders

He also cracked the largest landholders in the U.S. list, debuting at #19 this year:
The Largest Landholders In the United States: The Land Report 100