Due to a speech, the stock market rose 400 points last week.

Investors cheered when Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell hinted at a likely interest rate cut at the Fed’s next meeting in September at the annual conference of bankers and economists in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

Powell’s written speech was more than 2,300 words long and lasted 16 minutes, but not every word was equally important.

For example, when Powell said, “Our goal was to restore price stability while maintaining a strong labor market,” he was reiterating that the Fed’s primary job is to keep inflation low and put Americans to work. The Jackson Hole audience already knows what the Fed does. Powell said it for the benefit of everyone else.

But the wider audience who followed the speech live CNBC or waited on their smartphones for Powell’s cue: Will interest rates stay the same or fall?

Since the transcript of Powell’s remarks is widely available, I experimented to see if generative artificial intelligence could sift through the speech’s complex economic language and identify exactly the moment everyone has been waiting for.

ChatGPT was remarkably accurate. It predicted the exact quote that became the most commonly used headline among reporters and publications covering the speech.

Four minutes and 40 seconds into his speech, Powell said four words that lifted the mood and boosted the stock market:

“The time has come” to cut interest rates. “The direction is clear,” Powell added.

I asked ChatGPT to find “the most quotable line” from Powell’s speech that would be “understandable by the average person.” ChatGPT nailed it.

Here is a small selection of the headlines that followed the speech:

• “Fed Chairman Powell in Jackson Hole: ‘The time is ripe’ for rate cuts” – Axios
• “Fed Chair Powell: ‘The time has come’ for rate cuts” – Washington Post
• “Fed Chairman Powell Signals: ‘Time Has Come’ for Rate Cut” – New York Times
• “Fed Chair Powell announces upcoming rate cuts: ‘The time has come’” – CNBC
• “The time has come: The Fed just sent a crucial message about its next move – CNN
• “Fed Chairman Powell says it’s “time to cut rates” – The Wall Street Journal

And yes, even my colleagues at Forbes couldn’t resist a headline that read: “It’s time” to change interest rate policy. It’s simple and straightforward.

As a communications trainer, I look for patterns. And the pattern – like the future of interest rates – is clear. Audiences want important information presented simply and succinctly. “The time has come” to cut interest rates is probably the simplest sentence you will hear from the person responsible for setting monetary policy, an extraordinarily complex role.

This line is effective because, according to ChatGPT, it is “accessible and summarizes the essential point… it contains a clear and decisive message.”

ChatGPT’s assessment may have something to do with the fact that Powell’s most frequently quoted phrase – “The time has come” – consists of monosyllabic words.

Powell is a communications major and has said he tries to make economics as understandable as possible to the widest possible audience, so I’m not surprised that he put the core message in the simplest terms possible.

Powell didn’t have to make it easy. In another line of his speech, he said, “Anchored inflation expectations, reinforced by vigorous central bank action, can facilitate disinflation without the need for easing.” This sentence has ten multi-syllable words, which is fine, since Powell is speaking directly to professional economists. He is speaking her language and not the language of the common man.

However, when Powell wants his message to reach everyone, he uses monosyllabic words because he knows that short words are best for conveying big ideas.

Next time you’re preparing a speech or presentation, run it through an AI tool like Google Gemini, ChatGPT, or Grammarly. Ask it to identify or summarize the core message. If it returns the wrong answer—one that doesn’t align with your intent—it may be time to rewrite it so your big idea stands out.

Getting a message across is hard. And it gets even harder when there is so much “noise” or information competing for your audience’s attention. So get help from (mostly free) and widely available tools. You just need to ask the right question.