💡 What I'm Watching This Week
The silent Fed's first inflation test, and the five other things on my screen before the open.
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🙌 What I'm Watching. The levels, catalysts, and signals on my screen this week, so you can start the week a step ahead.
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First, welcome to a new Monday ritual.
Every Sunday we take one big idea apart slowly. This is the other bookend, a fast read before the bell on what I am actually watching this week. And it matters more than usual right now, because we just met a Fed that decided to stop narrating itself. When the Fed goes quiet, the job shifts to us, reading what it does instead of waiting on what it says.
Now let’s get right to it!
📊 The first inflation read of the Warsh era
Thursday morning, before most of us are even awake on the West Coast, the Bureau of Economic Analysis drops May PCE and core PCE. This is the inflation gauge the Fed watches above all others, and it is the first real reading since Kevin Warsh took the chair.
And the setup this time is unusual. At his first meeting, Warsh and the Committee did not soften their inflation outlook. They raised it, penciling in PCE around 3.6% this year, well north of the 2% target. So Thursday tells us whether the Fed’s own worry is showing up in the data, or whether prices are finally starting to cool as the energy shock fades.
The headline number, though, is only half the story. Warsh has said for years that he does not love the way the Fed measures inflation in the first place, and there is a quieter gauge he prefers that has been reading meaningfully cooler. Which ruler the Fed decides to trust may end up mattering more than any single print. We started pulling that thread Sunday, and we will follow it all the way down soon.
For now, Thursday at 8:30 a.m. Eastern is the week’s main event. It also lands the same day as our first live Roundtable, so we will have plenty to talk through that afternoon.
