Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell spoke at a press conference following the Fed's decision to keep interest rates at a 22-year high for the third FOMC meeting in a row. Powell claims economic growth had slowed "substantially" and the Fed would determine "the extent of any additional policy firming that may be appropriate to return inflation to 2 percent over time," suggesting rates have hit their peak.

Steve Brown, Guggenheim CIO of Total Return Strategies, joins Yahoo Finance to discuss Powell's comments and dive into the Fed's potential future rate policies.

"If they were to leave policy rates static and inflation does continue moving lower, which it has been, then policy rate, the real rate, would be increasing more and more restrictive," Brown outlines. "They've opened up the path to easing while not quite being a target because they're acknowledging that if they were to stay static, they would be getting more and more restrictive."

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live.

Video Transcript

JOSH LIPTON: The Federal Reserve keeping interest rates unchanged in its final meeting of the year. Powell reiterating several times at his news conference that the Fed still needs to see more evidence that inflation is moving down. Here to discuss what this means for investors, we have Steve Brown Guggenheim, Total Return Strategies CIO. All right. Steve, so we turn to you. What does this mean for investors? What was your response?

STEVE BROWN GUGGENHEIM: It was an unequivocally dovish meeting. It's been something that we've been looking for quite some time. Frankly, the Fed is doing what they said they were going to do and that's rely on the data to decide when to pivot policy. And I think, Josh, you referenced it earlier, this is a pivot.

And importantly, it's been removing the right tail distribution for interest rates, which has implications for risk assets, for bond markets, of course, but importantly, the more investors can take really significantly higher rates off the table and even now maybe higher for longer off the table, that has meaningful implications for the rest of the credit markets.

JULIE HYMAN: Now you said that it's justified by the data. Walk me through that for a moment. Because we did just get data that showed that inflation was decelerating--

STEVE BROWN GUGGENHEIM: Right.

JULIE HYMAN: --but not maybe as much as the market was anticipating. So is the coast really clear here?

STEVE BROWN GUGGENHEIM: Not necessarily clear, but I think actually your correspondent elicited one of the most interesting responses from Jay Powell. And that he said that you don't have to be at 2% in order to start easing. And that's one of the things we've been talking about internally too because if they were to leave policy rates static and inflation does continue moving lower, which it has been, then policy rate, the real rate would be increasingly more and more restrictive.

So they've opened up the path to easing while not quite being at target because they're acknowledging that if they were to stay static, they would be getting more and more restrictive.

JULIE HYMAN: It's so interesting to me because one of the knocks-- one of the many knocks on the Fed has been that it tends to be behind the curve habitually.

STEVE BROWN GUGGENHEIM: Right.

JULIE HYMAN: So the fact that Jay Powell said that, does it say that we're in a different kind of Fed regime as the Fed learned its lesson on that front?

STEVE BROWN GUGGENHEIM: Well, history will answer that question. But I think what it's showing is the Fed is not on a one-track policy mind, and they are being more flexible. I mean, think about the responses that they've had to deal with over the last couple of years, even going back to March, where they had unorthodox responses to a mini banking crisis here in the US and around the globe.

So they've really had to be flexible with their policy, not just think about the policy rate. One thing that didn't come up today was the balance sheet. You know, that the expectation I guess is that we would still continue to see that roll off in the background. So they're using the various tools that they have at their disposal. And I think they're showing that they're flexible and data-dependent. So they really mean it when they're data-dependent.