KINGSTON, NY, 14 October 2015— Nearly one year ago, on 29 October 2014, the Federal Reserve announced it would end QE3, its third round of bond-buying stimulus that ballooned its balance sheet by $3.5 trillion. No longer worried about global weakness with equity markets sound, and "that the likelihood inflation running persistently below 2 percent has diminished," the Fed declared there would be no need for QE4.

While pledging to maintain its Zero Interest Rate Policy it had in place since 2008 for a "considerable time," the expectation on the Street, based on the Fed's bullish growth, inflation and equity market forecasts, was for the first round of interest rate hikes to begin by mid 2015.

The Fed was wrong. The Street was wrong.

Fast forward to the Federal Reserve's mid-September Open Market Committee meeting. Faced with plunging commodity prices, plummeting currencies, battered equity markets and a global deflationary cycle, the FOMC, concerned that China's economy was slowing and the global economy risked falling into recession, did not raise interest rates.

But just one week later the story changed. The reason not to raise rates was no longer the reason. Instead, a rate hike was on the near horizon.

Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen, speaking at the University of Massachusetts, signaled that the Fed may raise rates before year's end, because inflation was set to rise and the Fed "is monitoring developments abroad, but we do not anticipate the effects of these recent developments to have a significant effect."