The Case For A September Fed Taper Just Got A Whole Lot Stronger

The Federal Reserve concludes its 2-day long Federal Open Market Committee meeting this afternoon.

JP Morgan's Michael Feroli noted that the Fed's post-meeting statement would likely get tweaks for today's GDP report, which would leave them 5 1/2 hours to make their final edits.

As we now know, Q2 GDP crushed expectations growing at a 1.7% rate. While, the Q1 growth rate was revised lower, that effectively made the upward trajectory of growth much stronger.

"Confounding expectations, US real GDP growth actually accelerated from 1.1% annualised in the first quarter to 1.7% in the second, suggesting that the recovery is gaining momentum and, at the margin, probably strengthening the Fed's resolve to begin tapering its monthly asset purchases in September," noted Capital Economics' Paul Ashworth.

On top of all of this, the ADP jobs report for July beat expectations, and the June numbers were revised upward.

The Fed publishes its FOMC announcement at 2:00 p.m. ET today. We'll cover it live at BusinessInsider.com.