The Federal Reserve wants to assure you it's not running on autopilot.
Minutes from the December Fed meeting indicate that policymakers are paying close attention to market volatility and concerns about trade disputes forecasts. They are also aware of how tricky it has becoming to raise interest rates and trim the central bank's balance sheet at the same time.
The release of minutes came days after Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said during an appearance at an economic conference that the central bank would be willing to make adjustments to the way it's unwinding its balance sheet.
It's tough to say whether the Fed will actually make adjustments, but any changes would have implications for not only investors, but also home buyers and other consumers.
Interest-rate hikes may garner most of the attention, but behind the scenes, the Fed has been shrinking its big $4.5 trillion balance sheet since October 2017. Now, it's shedding $50 billion worth of assets a month.
In the process, it's reversing the effects of a policy that it implemented during the last financial crisis and trying to return to "normal" after years of ultralow interest rates.
Balance-sheet reduction is something the Fed has never done before, and there's a lot of uncertainty regarding how long the process could take.
"I think it's going to be pretty substantial, maybe two or three years longer than they expect to reach some sort of a normalization of this size of a balance sheet, maybe longer," said Pete Earle, a research fellow for the American Institute for Economic Research.