Category: Markets & Economy

The Conference Board’s Leading Economic Index, a composite of ten forward-looking indicators ranging from manufacturing hours to building permits to consumer expectations, has spent the better part of a year pointing in one direction: down. In its most recent public release, the organization reported that the LEI fell 1.2 percent over the six months ending…

The wholesale prices that food manufacturers charge jumped 6.0% over the 12 months ending in April 2026, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on May 13. On a seasonally adjusted basis, the Producer Price Index for final demand surged 1.4% in April alone, its sharpest single-month increase in more than a year. Two Purdue University…

At 3 p.m. on a Tuesday in late May 2026, the number that prices nearly everything in the American economy ticked past a threshold most Wall Street models had filed under “unlikely.” The 30-year U.S. Treasury yield settled at 5.14%, its highest sustained level since before the 2008 financial crisis, according to the Treasury Department’s…

Jerome Powell may have already cast his final consequential vote as Federal Reserve chair. Whether he used it to break ranks will become public knowledge on Wednesday afternoon. The Fed held its benchmark interest rate steady at the April 28-29 meeting, keeping the federal funds rate in the 4.25%-4.50% range where it has sat since…

Iranian forces fired on commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz over the weekend, declared “strict management and control” over all traffic through the waterway, and triggered a near-halt in one of the most heavily trafficked shipping corridors on Earth. By late in the day on Sunday, only about 12 commercial vessels had made the…

When tariffs on imported goods pushed the price of a midsize sedan up by thousands of dollars, American car buyers absorbed the hit. When the cost of imported clothing, electronics, and groceries climbed, shoppers paid the difference at checkout. Now that the Supreme Court has struck down those emergency tariffs as unconstitutional, the federal government…

Kevin Warsh has not publicly said what he plans to do with interest rates. In roughly 30 days, he will sit at the head of the table when the Federal Open Market Committee meets on June 17-18 and makes its first rate decision under his leadership. Fed funds futures tracked by the CME FedWatch tool…

In the span of five days, the three Wall Street banks whose rate forecasts move markets all arrived at the same conclusion: the Federal Reserve is done cutting for 2026. Between May 19 and May 23, research teams at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Citigroup each published notes withdrawing their remaining calls for Fed rate…