katie: still with us, greg staples, megan graper, and winnie cisar.hat's the blackrock view, that we will see it outperform, which is different from the consensus on wall street, that investment grade will break the two-year losing streak against junk. megan, what is your view when you look at ig versus high-yield? megan: at the end of the day the majority of the market sees investment grade is the most attractive sector in credit so not surprisingly as was eluded to in the intro, we had a record-setting pace to start the year following what had been a very anemic $8 billion december. there has been a lot made of the uptick. i think it largely has been newsworthy because it stands in such stark contrast to a market that is disappointed to the downside in all but four weeks over the last six months. but not because it is particularly astounding in terms of historical january volumes. in fact you tend to see 44% of january new issuance materialize in the first week of the year. at the end of the day, where i see value is probably more so in investment g

today's fed meeting kickoff and that interstate decision tomorrow for more on that, we are joined by megan graperat barclays and kim harvey, who's professor of finance at duke university. rick and steve, of course, are here still with us why don't we go ahead and start with you, megan? what are you thinking after you see this number, after you start to try to get into the head of the feds, the feds, the feds people who are meeting, i should call them, what do you take away from this? >> i think steve's exactly right. i think today's data is just another illustration that we're entering a far more complicated phase of this cycle, with the market and policy makers, i think, clearly at odds over the path of rates. i think as we look to tomorrow, 25 is a fear gone conclusion, but i think the fed has not only their credibility on the line, they're also fighting with this soft landing hope that i think is still going exceptionally strong we don't think powell blinks in his commentary tomorrow. i think he's going to look to buy optionality, i think he's going to reiterate sort of a willingness to mainta