June 12 may be the day the Federal Reserve begins cutting rates, potentially shaking the market’s recent calm in new and unexpected ways.

In a two-day testimony, the Federal Reserve's chairman covered interest rates, inflation, and the state of the U.S. economy. To cut or not to cut, that is the question.

Economic data get revised all the time, but these days, as current data rolls in, previous data is being revised downward with regularity.

Surprise abounded in the latest “blowout” payrolls report, with the U.S. economy exceeding job-growth expectations, wages increasing above forecast, and unemployment falling lower than predicted.

Talk about acing the test: Chipmaker Nvidia blew the doors off its fiscal fourth quarter earnings. But the real story was the company’s outlook.

Despite headwinds, consumers have continued to spend — until sales declined in the biggest drop since last March and well below expectations.

Recently the S&P 500 Index® closed above the 5,000 mark for the first time ever. Behaviorists may chalk it up to “anchoring bias,” suggesting an importance to when broad market indices reach big, round milestones. 

At the start of the New Year, Federal Reserve officials began vocalizing their lack of urgency in cutting interest rates. Investors finally started to believe them.

The Federal Reserve’s decision to keep rates unchanged for a third consecutive meeting was itself a non-item, but midway through the subsequent press conference, when Fed Chair Jerome Powell suggested that March probably would not be the right time to signal rate cuts, it was immediately clear that his pivot that took place after December's rate-setting meeting was really more of a swivel.  

Get insights from the Empower Personal Wealth Chief Investment Officer on recent happenings in finance, on everything from inflation to AI. 

The star of last week's GDP report? The U.S. consumer, whose personal consumption expenditures represented 1.9% of that 3.3% growth, or just under 60%. 

On Friday the S&P 500 Index and NASDAQ 100 closed at all-time highs. While other areas of the market didn't clear the “best-of-all-time” bar, most equity screens were green. How should we view last week’s record close for these two very prominent equity indices?