The US Federal Reserve is set to gently ease off the monetary policy brakes in 2019 according to Taipei, Taiwan-based investment house, Reed Cavendish Wealth Management.

The firm says the turmoil that gripped equity markets in the last trading sessions of 2018 was partly caused by concerns over the US central bank’s telegraphed trajectory for interest rate rises in 2019. The Fed raised interest rates four times in 2018 as part of a monetary tightening policy aimed at unwinding the extraordinary stimulus it unleashed in the aftermath of the financial crisis and the Great Recession. It held interest rates at near-zero for 8 years and launched a quantitative easing program that swelled its balance sheet to $4.5 trillion.

The Fed now believes the US economy is strong enough to withstand higher interest rates and, with unemployment at record lows; there is evidence to suggest that this may be the case. Nevertheless, much of the boom in stock prices and other risky assets is owed to the huge liquidity resulting from the Fed’s stimulus and removing that liquidity is having an adverse effect on stock prices.

The Fed has come under fire from firebrand US President, Donald Trump. He has criticized the central bank heavily for raising interest rates and trying to reduce its balance sheet too quickly. According to Reed Cavendish Wealth Management, Mr. Trump has taken much of the credit for the stock market’s impressive rally since his election triumph in 2016, and any crash will almost certainly reflect badly on him and his chances for re-election in 2020.

Reed Cavendish Wealth Management analysts say they expect the Fed to back down on rate hikes and say there may even be a chance of a rate cut in 2019 if the economy shows signs of slowing too quickly, something that could prove extremely positive for stocks.