In his press conference Powell stated that the Fed planned on, and continues to plan on, the balance sheet moderation activity being on autopilot and using rate policy to adjust and respond to the activities in achieving their mandated goals.
I believe they are selling $50B per month currently. I also think that there is some long term balance sheet target ($2T-$2.5T maybe?), so if they get to that point they would presumably shut down or slow down the sales.
I believe someone asked Chairman Powell about the tightening effect of the balance sheet sales and in his answer he seemed to me to state that he did not believe it to have much of an impact. Reading between the lines, I think he seems to think that rate policy and rate changes have a larger impact.
@Free bird, I did watch the entire press conference with Chairman Powell. He stuck very closely in his answers to the Federal Reserves mandate from Congress. He stated clearly that the FOMC is not political and is determined to stay that way (when asked whether the President's recent comments affected the Fed's decision today). He also indicated that they don't really take the stock market behavior itself into consideration - they look more at underlying economic data.
@JDARNELL, Chairman Powell did state clearly several times that the FOMC is predicting a moderation in growth in 2019, but they still expect growth. In other words, the economy is going from 3.x% growth this year to ~2.5% growth next year. But still growth, not a contraction. Not sure if that's what you were meaning in your post #15.
And a general comment: Personally I think the current Fed is doing a pretty decent job. I think their mandate is for full employment and a symmetric inflation target of 2%. Today the unemployment rate is very low (3.7% or so IIRC) and inflation is just under 2%.