How should we think about monetary policy?

With low-quality data... what does it mean for the Fed to be pursuing an explicit strategy?

So it’s another month without job data, and the question is how does the central bank make policy, and how should we as market participants react to what the Fed is doing as it makes its monetary policy decisions?

There are, of course, some second- and third-tier employment reports over the past week to learn from. We had a report from the ADP that showed some significant job growth on the month. A report from the firm Challenger, Gray, and Christmas on announced corporate layoffs that looks to the future and shows some degree of elevation in planned layoffs for the next 6-months spins a somewhat cautionary tale.