Notes on the Week Ahead

The summer of 2026 has been dominated by the AI boom. Some fear that AI is advancing too quickly for thoughtful regulation. Others worry that end-user revenues will lag too far behind massive capital spending and fast-growing debt. From an economic perspective, AI is pure momentum, generating huge profit gains, adding to investment spending, boosting upper-income consumer spending via a wealth effect and coinciding with very solid gains in productivity.

No one liked the defendant. That much was clear. But when the jury retired to consider their verdict, they hardly knew where to start. The case was so confusing and the judge’s instructions hardly seemed adequate. “Perhaps”, suggested the foreman, “we should start with a list of questions…”

The earnings season has started with a blast. As of Friday morning, 49 of the S&P500 companies had reported second-quarter earnings, with 85% beating expectations and the index on track for a blockbuster 23% year-over-year gain for the quarter. According to FactSet, analysts now expect S&P500 operating earnings to reach $340.74 for 2026 as a whole, up 24% from 2025, following strong back-to-back gains of 10% and 13% in 2024 and 2025 respectively.

Alan Greenspan, who served as Fed Chairman for almost 20 years, died last month at the age of 100. He was a talented and faithful public servant who guided U.S. monetary policy through the stock market crash of 1987, the boom years of the 1990s and the dot-com bubble. He was thoughtful and witty in his public comments. However, he seemed to regard a lack of clarity as almost a virtue. He inherited a Fed that had always been reticent to communicate and he largely maintained that cloak of secrecy.

Despite very average economic performance, consumer sentiment remains at extraordinarily low levels. While there are many interesting aspects to this phenomenon, one is of particular relevance to investors. As we show on page 32 of the Guide to the Markets, peaks and troughs in consumer sentiment have, for many years, been powerful contra-indicators of stock market performance over the subsequent 12 months. However, does this relationship still hold, if the reason for weak sentiment is beyond the realm of a rational assessment of broad economic conditions?

In the pantheon of running injuries, there is a well-established hierarchy. A recreational runner, finishing any marathon, or exerting themselves at half that distance, can expect to come down with delayed onset muscle soreness, otherwise known as DOMS. Starting from barely a twinge at the finish line, the pain rises in intensity over the next few days, with your quads telling you firmly that your running days are over. But then it fades and a week later you should be running like a spring lamb again.

Last week, as a frothy stock market continued to zigzag across a high plateau, two events occurred with significant implications for the macroeconomic outlook. First, the President signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Iran, potentially bringing the Iran war to a close. Second, Kevin Warsh presided over his first meeting as Fed Chairman, resulting in a slightly more hawkish tilt to monetary policy in the short run and the promise of significant reform in the long run.

Last Wednesday’s CPI report, while not a surprise, still showed a year-over-year inflation rate of 4.2% - higher than in any month since April, 2023. For investors, this raises a number of questions. First, is this the peak for U.S. inflation and, if it is, how fast will inflation fall from here? Second, are we looking at the right inflation rate, anyway, given differences between CPI and PCE deflators, headline and core measures and the new Fed Chairman’s preference for trimmed mean and median readings?

Two weeks ago, Sari and I took a vacation - an extended road trip down the East Coast as far as Charleston and then inland back to New York through the Appalachians. On a long driving stretch on the way back, we stopped at a Jersey Mike’s just off the highway for some much needed nourishment. As we were waiting to pay, a talkative man, in the height of good humor, was ordering behind us. I don’t know if he knew anyone working at the store, but he acted as if he did. He said he’d just g...

The Financial Accounts of the United States is a quarterly Federal Reserve publication containing a great many large numbers but very little commentary, presumably because the authors feel the numbers speak for themselves. And the numbers do speak rather loudly.

In 19th century English novels, so-called “quarter days” often provided a chronological backdrop to the plot. A relic of medieval times, the quarter days were Lady Day (March 25th), Midsummer Day (June 24th), Michaelmas (September 29th) and Christmas Day (December 25th). These were the dates upon which rents were paid, leases expired and employment contracts took effect. Quarter days were often when the landlords of Austen expected their income, the impoverished families of Dickens had to cough up their rents and the farmworkers of Hardy would move on to their next place of employment. In short, they were days of a...

On Tuesday, the Senate Banking Committee will hold hearings to consider the nomination of Kevin Warsh to be the next Fed chair. His confirmation will likely be delayed until the Justice Department’s investigation into Jerome Powell is fully resolved. Despite this, Mr. Warsh’s answers to the committee’s questions could shed light on the future direction of monetary policy.

Evening newspapers, like vinyl records and rotary phones, are fading relics, all victims of the smartphones into which humanity is gradually burying its consciousness. But once, they were a vibrant part of daily life.

Growing up in Dublin in the 1970s and 1980s, there were two evening papers, the Evening Herald and the Evening Press. Sold at every street corner, they would distract commuters from the damp and discomfort of the tight-quartered, smoke-filled upstairs of double-decker buses.

A year ago this week, the President announced what he described as “reciprocal tariffs” on goods imported from all major U.S. trading partners. These tariffs, which were much broader and higher than expected, led to an immediate and sharp decline in stock prices.

In a speech last April, Fed Chair Nominee, Kevin Warsh, lamented the mission creep of the Federal Reserve as well as the Fed’s expanded balance sheet. Many academics agree with Warsh – the Fed has often tried to address problems that are not within its remit and with tools not suited to their purpose. Some of these endeavors have inflated the balance sheet which, rather like a Swiss army knife, is a tool used for many tasks, none of which it does particularly well.

One of the benefits of my marathon training is that, most weekends, I get to jog over the Newton and Wellesley hills with my running buddy, John, who happens to be a financial advisor. Over the course of three hours we solve the problems of the world, reviewing them with dour pessimism at the start of our run and assessing them with breezy optimism later on, as the running endorphins kick in.

Three weeks ago, I wrote an article entitled Detangling Solution for the Economic Outlook in which I outlined a baseline forecast for 2026 and into 2027, amidst many distortions and entanglements in economic data and trends.

So much has happened since then, including a raft of new economic numbers, the Supreme Court’s decision on IEEPA tariffs, and, most seriously, the start of an all-out war in the Middle East, that it makes sense to go through the exercise again, or, as the marketers of hair products might say, “rinse and repeat”.

On Friday, the Supreme Court released a long-awaited decision, ruling that the President’s imposition of tariffs, using the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act, otherwise known as IEEPA, was illegal. The President held a press conference that afternoon and issued a proclamation announcing a general 10% tariff on imported goods, using a different statute and promised to invoke a third set of statutes to replace the overturned tariffs on a more permanent basis. On Saturday, he announced that the 10% tariff rate was being raised to 15%.

Between taking a shower when I get up in the morning and another when I get home from running, I am a significant consumer of detangling solution. In my youth, an unruly shock of hair required liberal doses of the substance just to bring some order to my muppet-like locks. Today, sadly, the forest has thinned out, making detangling solution somewhat less necessary. However, with less to do up top, it would be nice if it could gently seep into my scalp, detangling some of the confusion beneath.

Last week saw dramatic moves in financial markets. Gold and silver, which rose very sharply last year and in January, suddenly lurched down before stabilizing. Bitcoin took a nosedive before achieving a significant, although partial, recovery on Friday. Mega-cap tech stocks posted huge earnings gains but announced even more lofty capital spending plans, contributing to a general selloff in the sector. And, at the end of the week, stocks saw a resounding rally, pushing the venerable Dow Jones Industrial Average over 50,000 for the first time ever.

On Friday, the President announced Kevin Warsh as his pick for Fed Chair. Warsh has a track record of hawkishness from his previous stint as Fed governor. He has also annunciated a broad philosophy that the Fed has moved too far from its original mandate by promoting ESG objectives and in enabling excessive federal spending through quantitative easing. That being said, he has argued more recently that the Fed should cut interest rates more aggressively.

Amidst a torrent of unsettling international and domestic events, the week ahead could be very consequential for the Federal Reserve. The FOMC will hold its first meeting of the year on Tuesday and Wednesday.  While they will likely leave interest rates on hold, any dissents on that decision and their commentary on the economic outlook will provide clues to the direction of short-term interest rates in 2026 and beyond. In addition, this week the President is expected to announce his nominee for Fed Chair, the person who, presuming they are confirmed by the Senate, will lead the Fed over at l...

Americans don’t like fruit cake.

This issue comes up every December when Sari, having stolen the job from me, sets about making the family Christmas cake. It is a divine confection - currants, sultanas, cherries, candied peel and almonds, liberally presoaked in whiskey and then folded in with flour, eggs, butter and spices and baked for hours at a low temperature. The scent in the kitchen is intoxicating but temporary as the cake, when cooled, is encased first in almond icing and then in royal icing. It weighs in at a hefty eight pounds and tastes ma...

Forecasting the economy right now feels a bit like trying to carve a path through thick jungle undergrowth on a foggy day. There are multiple layers of confusion and a forecast has to address these issues first before tracing out a possible path forward.

The Red River of the North starts at the confluence of the Bois de Sioux and Otter Tail rivers and forms most of the border between Minnesota and North Dakota. It then crosses into Manitoba and empties into Lake Winnipeg before its waters finally flow into the sea at Hudson Bay. Cities have grown up along its banks including Fargo, Grand Forks and Winnipeg and their residents are all too aware of one unfortunate feature of the river. Unlike most large U.S. rivers, it flows from south to north.

On Wednesday, the Fed will hold its last FOMC meeting of the year. Their actions and communications could move interest rates across the yield curve and so are important for investors.

When I first arrived in America, America seemed to be all about cars.

It was the early 1980s, and I had come over from Ireland to do a Ph.D. in economics at Michigan State University. The campus was strewn with the hand-me-down vehicles of the student body – great gas-guzzling behemoths rendered hopelessly uncompetitive by the soaring gas prices of the 1970s and fighting a losing battle against Japanese imports. Still, the domestic auto industry was crucial to the U.S. and particularly Michigan, and rising sales numbers, released every 10-days, were monitored as the hopeful early sh...

I was watching a football game over the weekend and I saw a giant lineman go down. He was in obvious pain and hobbled, assisted and very slowly, to the sideline. The TV commentators, to my amazement, said he didn’t look too bad and he was probably healthy enough to return to the field in a snap or two. But to look at this man, battered, bruised and probably many times concussed, his frame swollen by a cardiac nightmare of a diet, his veins pumped up with sugar, caffeine and who knows what else, you’d have to ask...

In our age of overwhelming technological progress, I still cling to the simpler practices of my youth. I read books rather than tablets, write with an ink pen in cursive rather than text with my thumbs, and attempt to use mental arithmetic, rather than a calculator, in solving math problems. I also greatly prefer an analog watch to a digital one.

I was rewatching Apollo 13 over the weekend - a fabulous movie, by the way, if you’ve never seen it - about how, in 1970, three astronauts returned safely to Earth following an explosion on their spacecraft, two days into a journey to the Moon.

Among the many problems faced by the crew and mission control was one of navigation. In order to conserve electrical power, they had to shut down their computers, along with their navigation systems, until they powered them up again just before reentry. Of course, this made it far more difficult to plot their co...

This quarter, we dropped the oil page from our Guide to the Markets.

There are always exactly 65 pages in the Guide, so when we want to add a page, we have to get rid of one. The process is, unfortunately, democratic, so when my younger colleagues wanted to add pages illustrating U.S. equity market concentration (page 10), the AI capital spending boom (page 22) and dollar weakness and international equity outperformance (page 43), I had to surrender the oil page.

But I did so with all the foreboding of well-grizzled experience.

One of the more challenging positions in football is that of place kicker for the visiting team. In theory, the job is simple – boot the ball through the middle of the uprights. However, there is a raucous crowd cheerfully doing its best to distract you. There are often swirling winds or other elements of nature ready to divert the football from its target the moment it leaves your foot.

As we enter the second week of the government shutdown, markets appear unconcerned. Last week, the S&P500 rose to an all-time record high, 10-year Treasury yields edged down and, while the dollar slipped slightly, measures of volatility across stocks, bonds and currencies all remained subdued.

As I get older, my memory gets a little foggier. That being said, I believe it was at lunch at a restaurant near our office on Friday, March 6th, 2009, when I and the then three other members of the Market Insights Team, Andy, Marlene and Jerry, made a bet. That day, although we didn’t know it at the time, the stock market hit its financial crisis low and the bet concerned how long it would take for the market to recover its losses.

When engaged in the dark arts of foretelling the Fed’s words and actions, I have always adopted what might be called the “prudent economist rule”. What would a prudent economist, serving as a Fed banker, do - assuming that they were armed with a reasonable economic forecast and with due consideration for the Fed’s inflation and unemployment goals and the need to maintain financial stability?

Stocks rallied in the immediate aftermath of Friday’s dismal jobs report, with the S&P500 jumping 0.5% to an all-time high of 6,532 when the market opened at 9:30AM. While this gain faded to a loss by the end of the day, the initial surge can only be rationalized in one way: investors bought stocks in the hope that weak economic data would force the Fed to cut rates more quickly.

American summers, much more so than in the rest of the world, are defined by two bookends: Memorial Day and Labor Day. As a result, the first week in September is always a time to review and plan. This is particularly important for investors this year since, facing a barrage of unsettling political and economic news, on one side, and very solid investment returns, on the other, it’s tempting to ignore fundamentals altogether and leave investments on auto-pilot.

On August 7th, with little fanfare, the IRS announced that, as part of its phased implementation of the OBBBA, it would not be adjusting W2 or 1099 forms for the current calendar year but would provide guidance and new forms, in due course, for calendar 2026.

This seemingly innocuous statement confirms that we will see in an even larger crop of personal income tax refunds early in 2026 than was anticipated when the OBBBA was passed. These higher income tax refunds should work much like a new round of stimulus checks, adding to consumer demand and inflation pressures early next...

One of the great challenges of modern life is avoiding distractions.

In our daily lives, we are flooded by breaking news, music on planes, ads in taxis and little numbers, gazing up at us from phone apps, saying that somebody has something to say. In the investment world, we are bombarded by scrolling tickers, new products and jargon, impenetrable financial reports and the analysis of every twist and turn of government policy.

The key, of course, is not to get distracted by things that are not important. One of those things is the money supply.<...

The inflation temperature is about to rise. It should be a low-grade fever, triggered by tariff impacts but mitigated by low energy prices, declines in shelter inflation and global economic sluggishness. But it should also linger well above the Fed’s 2% target, as the initial impact of tariffs is supplemented by the effects of a weakening dollar, a lack of labor supply and fiscal stimulus in the first half of 2026. It could, of course, be further sustained by another round of fiscal stimulus before the mid-term elections.