I’m going to eschew the temptation to make jokes about highly-paid forecasters stating the obvious. But you’re free, as always, to write your own such jokes.

Since last week’s Fed decision, equity strategists all around Wall Street have determined that the trajectory of monetary policy for the balance of the year will hinge in no small part on the evolution of the US labor market.

In other words: If it’s clues about the Fed you’re after, a good place to start is with the incoming jobs data. I’d have to agree with that, although… well, I said I wasn’t going to make jokes.

Suffice to say that if and when headline payrolls growth in the US as tabulated by the government slips below 100,000 and/or the jobless rate rises above 4.3%, the sense of urgency at the Fed for additional, outsized easing will increase and vice versa. (Although based on the first of this week’s Fedspeak, it sounds like officials are hell-bent on cutting at every meeting from now down to neutral almost irrespective of the data.)

What does all of the above mean for equities at the size-, style- and factor-level? Hopefully, you can answer that for yourself. Those of you who can’t would be better served with SPY. But then again, we’d all be better served with SPY.

If you’re the type who needs it spelled out for you, Morgan Stanley’s Mike Wilson offered some insight on Monday by way of the “framework” shown below.

As you can see, the best-case outcome for risk (i.e., “deep green”) is more than 50bps of rate cuts by year-end alongside an unemployment rate that stays below 4.1% and headline NFP growth north of 150,000. The worst-case outcome is “just” consecutive 25bps cuts in November and December accompanied by a rising UNR and payrolls below the 100,000 threshold.

Wilson was keen to note that’s just a “high-level road map for how to think about risk/reward in various labor market and monetary policy scenarios.” It’s not “exhaustive.” Anything can happen. Caveat emptor. And so on.

“Outcomes to the left (improvement in the labor data) skew risk-on and are consistent with cyclical leadership,” he went on. “Outcomes to the right (weakness in the labor data) skew risk-off and are consistent with defensive leadership,” while anything in the middle is “somewhat mixed in terms of risk level and leadership depending on i) whether we see material downward payroll revisions and ii) what the Fed’s reaction function looks like.”

Again — and not to cast any aspersions — I’m not sure how insightful that is for those of you (us) steeped in markets, but it’s worth a quick mention all the same.

Allow me to say, in closing, that a Fed which cuts by more than another 50bps through year-end with a jobless rate flirting with a three-handle and an NFP headline that stays above 150,000 (i.e., Wilson’s “deep green” scenario) is a Fed on an inflation suicide mission.