The Fed is waiting for everything to line up before it raises rates but when will that be? Ultra-low interest rates have led borrowers to take trillions of dollars in debt tied to the dollar.

Designed to prevent ruling parties abusing monetary policy to help win elections, some critics reckon central bank independence itself is the historical experiment and stress that it has not prevented booms and busts or market crises nor has it been unambiguously positive for everyone.

Developing economies, like those in the Caribbean, should brace for possible financial market turbulence from the upcoming US monetary policy tightening cycle, according to a new World Bank policy research paper released ahead of this week’s meeting by the U.S. Federal Reserve’s policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee.

Both the US Dollar and US Stocks have sold off with aggression since the announcement, and this is somewhat counter-intuitive of what one might expect. Investors in the US often use aggressive stock indexes to gauge the strength of the stock market.

Of particular note is the move that the S&P put in yesterday. But after Yellen took the stage and as she spoke further during the press conference, the S&P sold-off heavily.

Emerging-market stocks have fallen 13 per cent this year and are valued at a 28 per cent discount to advanced-nation shares, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Kose goes on, “An abrupt change in risk appetite for emerging market assets could become contagious and affect capital flows to many countries”. This is how bubbles are formed: A lack of available options and blind trust that prices will just keep going up forever.

With the MSCI Emerging Markets Index down about 14 percent this year, positioning the widely followed emerging markets benchmark for its third consecutive annual loss and fourth in five years, getting excited about developing world equities and exchange traded funds is increasingly hard .

Rising employment and household spending are driving “solid” growth in the United States, while growth in the eurozone is improving, albeit more slowly than expected given its declining oil prices, interest rates and currency, the Paris-based worldwide economic organization said. This makes the thought of holding fixed income investments, and the prospect of staying long stocks – even more daunting.

We may see an equity recovery in Q4 if the Fed avoids raising rates, with the liquidity provided by the ECB and the Bank of Japan acting as an additional incentive for investors to move back into riskier assets. This has brought more risk into the environment because the Fed’s stance towards next year and thereafter is now in question. The rand was set for its biggest weekly increase since March. GBP/USD is up approximately 100 pips since the start of yesterday’s FOMC announcement at 2 PM.