The summer may be winding down, but there's an awful lot of potentially market moving activity in store next week. Between Jackson Hole, Nvidia earnings and the Federal Reserve's preferred inflation report all coming in a five-day stretch, investors will have to stay on their toes navigating the cross currents — especially as turbulence in the bond market finally washes up to reach stocks. The yield on the U.S. 30-year Treasury surged to multi-decade highs this week, and refused to fall even after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent made the surprise decision to at least double buybacks of long-dated bonds starting in September. That heightens the importance of what Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh might say next week at the central bank's annual symposium at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to calm bond investors. The newly-installed Fed leader has had an inauspicious start so far, given his insistence on staying tight lipped and his refusal after the central bank's July meting to give forward guidance. Instead, yields have spiked. "It's pretty clear he can't keep repeating what he said," said Steve Englander, global head of G10 FX research at Standard Chartered. "Because the market is somewhat skeptical of commitments to get inflation down without saying what you're willing to do to get it down." Debt concern Mounting concern around U.S. government debt, which just crossed the $40 trillion mark this week for the first time, massive spending on artificial intelligence and persistent inflation that remains stubbornly above the Federal Reserve's 2% target, have all contributed to the recent rise in yields. With inflation remaining top of mind, investors will get further insight into the latest movement in prices when the personal consumption expenditure price index for July is released next Wednesday at 8:30 a.m. ET. The Wall Street consensus calls for the month-over-month numbers to move both lower and higher, while the year-over-year inflation rates retreat by a small amount. Economists polled by FactSet expect that July PCE will show headline inflation rose 0.20%, lower than 0.30% in June, while core inflation, excluding food and energy, increased 0.20% on the month, up from 0.13% the month before. The core annual rate estimate of 3.2% is a step down from 3.3% in June, while the headline annual rate is seen falling to 3.6% in July from 3.7% the prior month. Joseph Wang, a professional investor who also runs Fedguy.com website, expects that Warsh will remain tight lipped around the path of monetary policy. Any emphasis in his Jackson Hole address on his commitment to 2% inflation could help in talking down long bond yields. "What he could do at Jackson Hole is to reemphasize his commitment to 2% of PCE, and afterwards, after hitting that, maybe you can change your inflation index to something else," Wang said. "I think that's the appropriate way that people usually talk about this." Path to S & P 8,000 If anything, next week's Nvidia results could give the stock market the positive catalyst that it needs, especially given that it was tech shares that were notable losers this week. On Friday, all three major averages were on pace to snap a three-week advance, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite set to slide nearly 2% on the week. The bleed in semiconductors was even worse, with the VanEck Semiconductor ETF falling nearly 5%. Momentum stocks were off by 4%. The Magnificent Seven stocks as a group were lower by more than 1%. What the world's largest public company says about continued AI spending will be carefully parsed by investors, as will any commentary CEO Jensen Huang gives about the company's Rubin chip, or any change in its relationship with China. "If there's a path to 8,000" in the S & P 500, "it's going to be led by Nvidia, and that could start next week," said Jay Woods, chief market strategist at Freedom Capital Markets. Week ahead calendar All times ET. *August 27–29, Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium Monday, Aug. 24 Tuesday, Aug. 25 8:15 a.m. ADP Weekly Employment change (08/08) 9:00 a.m. FHFA Home Price Index (June) 10:00 a.m. Consumer Confidence (August) 10:00 a.m. New Home Sales (July) Earnings: Intuit Wednesday, Aug. 26 8:30 a.m. Durable Orders preliminary (July) 8:30 a.m. GDP second preliminary (Q2) 8:30 a.m. Core PCE Deflator (July) 8:30 a.m. Personal Consumption Expenditure (July) 8:30 a.m. Personal Income (July) Earnings: HP , Veeva Systems , Synopsys , Salesforce , Nvidia , CrowdStrike , Agilent Technologies , J.M. Smucker , Williams-Sonoma Thursday, Aug. 27 8:30 a.m. Initial Claims (08/22) 8:30 a.m. Wholesale Inventories preliminary (July) Earnings: Ulta Beauty , Marvell Technology , Workday , Autodesk , Dollar General , Hormel Foods , Dollar Tree , Best Buy Friday, Aug. 28 9:45 a.m. Chicago PMI (August) 10:00 a.m. Michigan Sentiment final (August)
Big week coming up with PCE, Nvidia earnings and then Jackson Hole. Here's what to expect