Technical Trends in the Economic Data

What’s in Today’s Report:

• Technical Trends in the Economic Data

Futures are little changed following a flurry of new tariff announcements overnight.

The administration announced several new tariffs on specific industries, most notably pharmaceuticals and semiconductors.

While the tariff headlines appear negative, the announcements include provisions to reduce the practical impact, they aren’t materially impacting markets.

Today focus will be on further dissecting the tariff announcements (as long as there are “outs” for companies, the announcements won’t be direct negative influences on markets) but also on inflation, as we get the Core PCE Price Index (E: 0.2% m/m, 2.9% y/y), and the inflation expectations in Consumer Sentiment (1-Yr Inflation Expectations: 4.8%, 5-Yr. Inflation Expectations: 3.0%).  Markets need inflation data to stay stable to continue to support rate cut hopes, so in-line to slightly soft numbers will be welcomed by markets (and a hot number would be a negative headwind).

Turning to the Fed, there are two speakers today:  Barkin (9:00 a.m. ET) and Bowman (1:00 p.m. ET) but they shouldn’t move markets.