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Guggenheim Partners Chief Investment Officer Scott Minerd says the Federal Reserve should slash interest rates by half a percentage point as soon as this month when officials gather between regular meetings.

“Let’s rip the Band-Aid off and move on because that would send a clear signal to the market that the Fed is not going to allow a recession to occur,” Minerd said Tuesday in an interview with Bloomberg Television.

“Given the fact that the Fed is boxed in the way it is,” Minerd said, “they should just go ahead and cut rates dramatically, let’s say by half a point and probably do it intermeeting and basically get this over with.”

One opportunity Minerd suggested is when the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City holds its annual economic policy symposium Aug. 22-24 in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The Fed cut rates 25 basis points at its July meeting.

The next Federal Open Market Committee meeting is scheduled for Sept. 17-18.

Last month, Minerd said the Fed should raise rates rather than cut them to keep the economy from overheating. Now he says the Fed needs to calm investor sentiment.

“We’re not really trading on fundamentals,” Minerd said. “We’re trading on fear and panic.”

(Updates with comments on intermeeting cut in third paragraph. A previous version of this story corrected the prior rate cut.)

--With assistance from Scarlet Fu, Caroline Hyde and Alexandra Harris.

To contact the reporter on this story: John Gittelsohn in Los Angeles at johngitt@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alan Mirabella at amirabella@bloomberg.net, Josh Friedman, Melissa Karsh

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