Stocks trade sideways ahead of political updates, Jackson Hole

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Investors seemed to be looking for direction during Monday’s session. Major indexes traded sideways all morning and into the early afternoon, flipping between the mildest of gains and losses ahead of what may turn into a volatile week.

First, geopolitical tensions will take center stage as the world waits for updates from Ukrainian President Zelensky’s White House visit Monday. The meeting comes after Trump’s Friday trip to Alaska, where he met with Russian President Putin.

Trump and Zelensky started speaking with reporters in the Oval Office right as we were finalizing today’s newsletter. Trump said he thinks he can arrange a Putin-Zelensky meeting. Zelensky said he was open to this possibility and wanted to find a diplomatic way to end the war.

Later this week we’ll see the minutes from the FOMC’s July meeting (out Thursday). It’s the first look we’ll get into what went down last month when two Fed governors dissented the decision to hold rates.

The Jackson Hole Economic Symposium (the Kansas City Fed’s annual conference) kicks off Thursday. Fed Chair Jerome Powell will speak on Friday morning. As of Monday, markets were pricing in an 83% chance of a 25 basis points interest rate cut in September — up from a month ago (56%), but down slightly from a week ago (86%), per CME Group data.

Powell’s speech is the main event of the week. Historically, his Jackson Hole remarks tend to be followed by a mild boost. The S&P 500 has had a median increase of 0.4% on the day of Powell’s Wyoming address between 2018 and 2024, according to data from MarketWatch.

2022 was an exception, when the S&P 500 slid 3% the day after Powell took a more hawkish stance in his comments.

Powell effectively claimed victory over price stability last year, noting in his speech that his “confidence has grown that inflation is on a sustainable path back to 2%.” Weeks later, the Fed made its first cut in more than four years and slashed interest rates by 50 bps.

This time around, the data isn’t looking as promising. Plus, there’s significant pressure from the White House (although, as we’ve written before, given that Powell knows he’s on the way out, we doubt he’s taking the president’s thoughts into consideration).