US interest rates will settle in a range of between 3% and 4% after reductions by the Federal Reserve (Fed), according to Oaktree Capital Management LP’s Howard Marks.

“The Fed will back off from the emergency rate of five and a quarter, five and a half and get down into the threes,” Marks, a co-chairman and co-founder of Oaktree said at a conference in Melbourne on Thursday. “But my point to you, my belief is that we’re going to stay there in the threes and we’re not going back to zero or a half or one.”

The Fed is widely expected to kick off its easing cycle this month. Still, there remains a large degree of disagreement about the pace of reductions. Some rates traders expect policymakers to act more aggressively with a 50 basis point cut, while others anticipate a quarter-point decrease when Fed officials meet on Sept 17-18 in Washington.

Marks’ views are broadly in line with market pricing on how deep cuts will be. Futures traders expect reductions to stop around the 3% range.

Marks said the Fed had been required to lift rates due to the “emergency” over inflation in recent years. “The emergency, I think, is over,” he said.

Oaktree oversaw US$193 billion as of June 30 across credit, private equity, real estate and listed equities strategies, according to its website.

“Economic growth may be slower, the profit margins may erode,” he said. “In other words, I think we are going back to normal, but normal is different from what we saw over the last 40 years. That’s the result. And normal in the economic and investment world consists of a mix of good times and bad.”

On China, Marks said he believed the country would not isolate itself globally. He said to achieve 5% growth, they “need the rest of the world to do it”.

“I think they’re not going to go rogue and desert the rest of the world,” he said.

  - Bloomberg