CARY, N.C. -

Voting unanimously, all nine members of the Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee agreed to maintain the target range for the federal funds rate at 1 to 1.25 percent during their meeting this week.

First Franklin Financial Services projected when the Fed might make its next move as the FOMC has two more opportunities this year coming in September and December.

“The committee will carefully monitor actual and expected inflation developments relative to its symmetric inflation goal,” the Fed said in its latest policy statement. “The committee expects that economic conditions will evolve in a manner that will warrant gradual increases in the federal funds rate; the federal funds rate is likely to remain, for some time, below levels that are expected to prevail in the longer run.

“However, the actual path of the federal funds rate will depend on the economic outlook as informed by incoming data,” the Fed added.

In determining the timing and size of future adjustments to the target range for the federal funds rate, the Fed reiterated that the committee will assess realized and expected economic conditions relative to its objectives of maximum employment and 2 percent inflation.

Meanwhile, two experts from First Franklin Financial Services, offered their prediction of what the Fed might do next. Brett Ewing is the firm’s chief market strategist and Lance Mitchell is its research director.

“The Fed continued its policy of not upsetting the apple cart when they didn’t give a press conference to explain things,” Ewing and Mitchell said. We believe that both the market and the Fed will be much more concerned with how the balance sheet normalization will go and we expect the Fed to begin the normalization sometime before the end of the year.

“It will likely use the remaining two press conferences to focus on questions the market may have,” they continued. “If the Fed can get the unwind off and running successfully without upsetting markets we expect Janet Yellen to step down as Fed chair and Gary Cohn to take over in 2018.

“The weak dollar continues to put the Fed in a goldilocks environment where the market isn’t concerning itself with rates,” Ewing and Mitchell went on to say. “And we don’t think there will be a rate hike until 2018; that’s the most likely scenario. Although December 2017 is in play, but still is less than 50 percent chance.”

Also of note, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin didn’t specifically mention interest rates during his opening statement during a hearing hosted on Thursday by the House Financial Services Committee. But Mnuchin did allude to the positive economic trends that the Fed emphasized are what dictate upcoming actions.

“Years have passed since the financial crisis and this has given us time to see what has worked and what has not,” Mnuchin said. "The administration is committed to a robust financial system with a free flow of credit that fuels the engine of American growth. This means allowing community financial institutions to lend and small businesses access to borrowing. It means giving Americans the opportunity to make independent financial decisions, such as buying a home and saving for retirement.”