According to online reports, the Federal Reserve's meeting minutes released on Wednesday showed that financial market participants once again postponed expectations for the end of the Fed's balance sheet reduction process. Minutes of the meeting show that large banks and money funds informed the Fed ahead of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) interest-rate meeting on June 17-18 that they expected the reduction of balance sheets to stop in February, when the size of the balance sheet will shrink to $6.2 trillion. This is slightly different from what respondents expected before the FOMC meeting in May, when they expected the Fed to end its contraction in January and its balance sheet size would fall to $6.125 trillion.