Survey: Market Pros Reveal Their Grades For Jerome Powell’s Tenure As Head Of The Federal Reserve

Shares have skilled a wild 2025, plunging following President Donald Trump’s tariff announcement in April, however have since surged to new highs. Nonetheless, persistent inflation and geopolitical strife have saved traders on edge. On the heart of that storm has been Fed Chair Jerome Powell, whose tenure has been marked by each reward and criticism, which is particularly true as he nears the top of his four-year time period in 2026. 

Bankrate’s Second-Quarter 2025 Market Professionals Survey requested specialists about Powell’s stewardship of the central financial institution, what it has meant for traders and the challenges to come back in nominating his successor. Their solutions famous that Powell usually did a superb job, however not with out some missteps. His successor will probably be moving into a tricky position. 

To provide some perspective, Powell skilled some unprecedented occasions in his time as Fed chair. He managed the Fed’s COVID-19 pandemic response, which included early stimulus intervention and introduced rates of interest to near-zero ranges, serving to to help the economic system. 

Nonetheless, a few of Powell’s insurance policies have remained controversial. His early declaration of inflation in 2021 as “transitory” is usually considered as a mistake that later led to delayed coverage motion and aggressive rate of interest hikes all through 2022. This despatched shares decrease, and so they ultimately entered a bear market.

This string of occasions has left traders with combined emotions about how properly Powell has really dealt with setting coverage, all issues thought of.

Bankrate requested the Market Maven survey members this open-ended query: “Fed Chair Jerome Powell is headed into the ultimate months of his time period. Touch upon his stewardship of the central financial institution, what it has meant for traders, together with these uncovered to fixed-income, and the challenges in nominating his successor.”

“He appears to have completed a stable job of navigating coverage in a extremely unsure and difficult surroundings, with respect to shaking off the preliminary description of inflation as being ‘transitory’ and getting it again underneath management,” says Sameer Samana, head of worldwide equities and actual belongings at Wells Fargo Funding Institute. “This brought about some ache for traders through the pivot (from transitory to catch-up) however has been much less of a difficulty lately. The important thing to choosing a successor will come right down to market notion, and the way credible that individual is (with markets/traders).”

Forecasts and evaluation:

This text is one in a sequence discussing the outcomes of Bankrate’s Second-Quarter 2025 Market Professionals Survey:

Specialists reward Powell’s stability, however fault his timing errors

As Powell heads into the ultimate yr of his time period, traders have to contemplate the broader context of his time within the place. 

Because the face of financial coverage throughout a risky financial period that featured a world pandemic, excessive inflation and market swings, Powell has needed to strike a fragile stability between being responsive and being restrained with regards to elevating or chopping rates of interest to handle inflation and help the broader economic system. 

This context is essential for traders to know for 2 causes. 

• The Fed’s selections trickle down and affect a lot of issues, like mortgage charges, bank card curiosity, bond yields and even the inventory market, that are all elements to contemplate for on a regular basis traders.
• Powell’s successor will form how the Fed responds to inflation, potential job development and financial downturns sooner or later. Trump, who has overtly criticized Powell’s determination to carry charges regular, will choose that individual, doubtlessly triggering a shift in financial coverage. 

Responses to the Market Maven survey had been principally constructive, with specialists giving Powell a thumbs-up and crediting him for a gradual hand amid pandemic chaos, acknowledging that imperfection is simply a part of the job.

“Jay Powell has served our nation extraordinarily properly,” says Michael Farr, chief market strategist at Hightower Advisors. “Managing financial coverage based on a twin mandate requires as a lot artwork as science. It’s not a job that may ever be completed completely and Powell has made errors. However total, his tenure has earned an A.”

One respondent wasn’t fairly able to let Powell off the hook for being too cautious when it got here to inflation, although, and criticized him for not pivoting shortly sufficient when different central banks had been loosening their insurance policies.

“Powell is a lame duck combating an inflation ‘bogeyman’ that by no means materialized,” says Louis Navellier, CIO at Navellier & Associates, Inc. “I can not imagine Powell is ignoring the financial knowledge. He must be following the ECB and different central banks and chopping key rates of interest. Powell ruined his legacy.”

No matter the place you stand on Powell’s monitor file, one factor is obvious: The Fed’s subsequent strikes — and who’s going to be making them — are essential to concentrate to. Whereas the Fed doesn’t instantly have an effect on, say, your 401(ok) retirement financial savings account, its selections play a significant position in shaping the market situations that drive your portfolio’s efficiency, particularly for long-term traders.