Wall Street logged a downbeat performance last week.The S&P 500 declined 0.3%, the Dow edged lower by 0.2%, and the Nasdaq slipped 0.7%, marking the first weekly loss in four weeks for the Nasdaq and the S&P 500, as quoted on CNBC.
August’s personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index, the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of inflation, came in as expected. Core PCE, barring food and energy, rose at an annual rate of 2.9%, while the all-items index recorded a 2.7% increase year over year and a 0.3% monthly gain. These readings, though still above the Fed’s 2% target, reaffirmed expectations for two quarter-point interest rate cuts by the year-end, per the CNBC article.
Invest in Gold
Consumer sentiment for September, reported by the University of Michigan, was only slightly weaker than expected and held steady among wealthier households with larger stock holdings. The survey’s index of consumer sentiment recorded a reading of 55.1, just slightly below the Dow Jones consensus forecast of 55.4 (as quoted on CNBC).
The reading marked a 5.3% decline month over month and a 21.6% slump from the same period a year ago.Inflation expectations held stable, with the one-year outlook at 4.7% and the five-year at 3.7%, as quoted on the abovementioned CNBC article.
Thanks to stronger consumer spending, the U.S. economy grew at an unexpectedly robust 3.8% pace in Q2 of 2025, marking an upward revision of second-quarter growth released by the government.
The Commerce Department said that gross domestic product (GDP) bounced back in the spring after a 0.6% decline in the first quarter, which had been hit hard by trade tensions. The new estimate is higher than the previously reported 3.3% growth (per AP news, as quoted on Yahoo Finance).
The Fed enacted its first rate cut of 2025 in September and also hinted at further cuts this year.At the time of writing, there are 87.7% chances of a 25-bp rate cut in the October meeting, per the CME FedWatch Tool.
In a trio of posts on Truth Social on Sept. 25, 2025, President Trump announced that the U.S. will roll out a host of tariffs starting Oct. 1. The measures will cover imported kitchen cabinets, bathroom vanities, pharmaceutical products, and heavy trucks. Tariffs will range from 30% to 100%, though exemptions will apply to drugmakers currently building manufacturing plants in the United States, as quoted on Yahoo Finance.
