Fed to make first 2026 interest rate decision

Look at the stock market. The Dow is down about 500 points or about 1%, but the S&P and the Nasdaq are in the green so far. All this as we await the Fed decision tomorrow. Joining us now to talk more about it is Kristin Myers. She is the ETF editor in chief of Asset TV. Kristin, good to see you. Good to see you too, Vlad. So we are awaiting the first interest rate decision of the year from the Fed. What can we expect, and what does this potentially mean for borrowers? Yeah, so right now, the markets are predicting, with about a 97% rate, that the Fed is going to hold rates steady in its decision tomorrow afternoon. So what that means, essentially, for borrowers is I'm so sorry but, unfortunately, we are not going to see borrowing costs get any cheaper right now. Credit-card rates are still going to remain elevated, and other borrowing costs are going to remain elevated. So if you are carrying a balance, it's going to be a little bit harder to pay it off for the time being.

President Trump is getting into a tug of war over tariffs again, as you know. So let's talk about the conflict that we're seeing, as we just reported, with South Korea and also Canada. Yeah so as you were mentioning a little bit earlier in the report, one, President Trump has threatened higher tariffs from 15% to 25% against South Korea because he says that the country is not holding up its end of the deal for the trade deal that they had already negotiated earlier. And then he's also threatened Canada and India as well with higher tariffs, mainly because he doesn't want them doing any sort of dealings with China and Iran. And he actually slammed Canada, particularly when he spoke at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, saying that Canada essentially better not make any sort of trade deal with China because if they do, he is going to raise tariffs to 100% when it comes to Canada. Now, anyone that's watching and thinks, oh, great, more tariffs. Everything is going to become a little bit more expensive. I do have just a note of caution or perhaps optimism, which is the fact that they've actually done some analysis on this, and only about 25% of the tariff threats have actually come into fruition or been made a reality. So this could be, for the time being, just threats and empty threats at that. So I don't think anyone needs to worry just yet that higher prices are going to be on the way for any of those goods that we import from those countries.

Yeah, I think your speculation about that is probably accurate, Kristin, as always. Thank you very much, fried. Appreciate it.