The minutes of the US Federal Reserve are usually only for gourmets.

It reports on the intricacies of monetary policy that are seldom of interest to broader strata.

But not this Wednesday: In the current minutes, several Fed representatives emphasized that both economic and inflation developments would speak in favor of a more rapid exit from the loose monetary policy.

In plain English: interest rates rising faster.

In addition, some Fed members spoke out in favor of reducing total assets shortly after the first rate hike.

This means that maturing bonds are no longer replaced, which would depress bond prices and thus increase yields.

That would make stocks less attractive.

Franz Nestler

Editor in business.

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The Fed seems to be getting more nervous and its decisions more surprising. In any case, investors were caught off guard, which was reflected in falling prices. By Wednesday afternoon, for example, the Dax rose by more than 2 percent and was close to its record high. After that, the logs were published, and he gave up all of his weekly winnings - at the same time the first losses of the young year. On Friday afternoon, the Dax was still at around 15,950 points, around 0.4 percent higher than last week. Inflation is also still a major concern - in Germany it has recently risen more sharply than it has been in 30 years. Economists still believe that the comparatively high rate of inflation is only temporary, but the uncertainty about it remains.And nothing investors hate more than uncertainty. So that wasn't exactly the start of the new year as investors would have liked instead.

But looking ahead is now more important than looking back. The labor market figures on Friday then gave an indication of how things could go on. And these turned out to be significantly worse than expected. Only around 200,000 jobs were created, experts expected 400,000 jobs. The separately determined unemployment rate fell at the same time to 3.9 from 4.2 percent and thus more than expected by experts. This of course sends mixed signals to the outside world. Although this makes a tighter monetary policy less likely - which in turn pleases the markets - at the same time, a paralyzed economy is never good for the markets.

From next week onwards there will first be figures to be examined.

The series of numbers traditionally begins with the big banks.

Citigroup, JP Morgan and Wells Fargo presented business figures on Friday.

Then the world's largest asset manager Blackrock joins them.