While the Federal Reserve dropped "patient" from its statement, the central bank telegraphed a new word Wednesday: prudence, bond man Bill Gross said. "The Fed expressed a lot of prudence and concerns going forward," the Janus Capital portfolio manager said in an interview with CNBC's "Power Lunch."
"They expressed concern about the potential for inflation. They expressed concern about the potential for global weakness and international developments, which is code basically for a strong dollar, and they expressed concern in terms of the employment situation not threatening inflation going forward."
By removing the word "patient" from its statement, the Fed Open Market Committee opened up the possibility of hiking interest rates. However, the statement
noted that the committee will raise near-zero rates when it has seen further improvement in the labor market and is reasonably confident that inflation will move back to its 2 percent objective over the medium term.
That has caused Gross to change his projection of a rate hike in June to September.
He also believes the strong dollar weighed on the Fed's mind.
"Interest rates have been brought down in terms of their projections in order to weaken the dollar somewhat going forward," he said.
"Central banks around the world are fighting a currency war and it's about time, I suppose, that the United States joined in this particular conflict."
What does all this mean for bonds? Gross said U.S. Treasurys are "probably a decent value."
"There is not a bear market in Treasury bonds going forward."
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