Powell's printer went brrrr. Kashkari goes grrrr. And WallStreetBets has a new bogeyman.

By Jamie Chisholm

There was a time when the self-confessed market degenerates populating Reddit's WallStreetBets message board would proclaim Jerome Powell the market's hero as his printing press went brrrr!

Indeed, earlier this week the Federal Reserve chair's image featured prominently in the masthead for the site under which traders would post their trades of the day and talk, in profanity-laden terms, of monstrous losses, or gains (ok, mainly losses) from zero-day-to-expiry option bets.

Powell's recent talk of considering interest rate cuts this year was welcomed as further evidence that he had the market's back. To the moon.

But it's all changed.

Now the masthead image is off a sandstorm blasting Wall Street, buffeting Powell and some startled bulls. It looks like Jim Cramer, the CNBC commentator and a favorite love/hate figure of the wallstreetbets crowd, is also in distress.

The vanguard of this hot tempest is Neel Kashkari, president of the Minneapolis Fed, whose recent warnings that stubborn inflation means there may have to be no interest rate cuts this year now look terrifyingly prescient for bullish day traders.

Clearly, Kashkari possibly being proved right is not his fault. But a bad trade requires a scapegoat.

As contributor pm-me-nice-pics posted early Thursday:

Reddit (RDDT) itself suffered on Wednesday after the hot CPI data, with the stock sliding 6% and now down 44% from its post-IPO peak.

-Jamie Chisholm

This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

04-11-24 0859ET

Copyright (c) 2024 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.