Markets ended the week in a controlled drift higher, with a cooler PCE print doing most of the heavy lifting for sentiment. 

The S&P 500 rose 0.2% and now trades within a whisper of record territory, while the Nasdaq and Dow followed suit. 

The mood wasn’t euphoric, just classic pre-Fed discipline as traders let the inflation data lock in next week’s cut.

Yields told the real story. 

The 10-year inched up as short-end funding pressure kept front-end rates stubborn, a reminder that liquidity, not optimism, is steering the tape. 

Oil held near $60 and Bitcoin’s 3.5% slide back toward $89K signaled risk appetite moderating at the edges.

Leaders rotated cleanly.

Salesforce extended its rebound, Victoria’s Secret surged on guidance, and Albemarle rallied on lithium-tightness forecasts. 

Nvidia stayed heavy below its 50-day, and Netflix slipped again as its $72B Warner Bros. bid drew fresh regulatory pushback… another potential drag on mega-cap momentum.

Macro reinforced the glide path.

Core PCE cooled to 2.8% while Michigan sentiment improved, but inflation expectations barely budged. 

Into Monday, earnings quiet down, but positioning won’t.

Short-term funding flows and pre-meeting chatter will dictate how confidently the market walks into Wednesday’s vote.

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Markets head into the Fed meeting with a clearer tension: policymakers are split, but positioning isn’t. 

Traders are still assigning ~85% odds to a cut, effectively sidelining the hawkish dissent and treating Powell’s guidance, not the vote count, as the event risk. 

The division narrows visibility into the first half of 2026, tightening the market’s sensitivity to every incremental data point.

The late-arriving PCE report eased that tension. 

Core cooled to 2.8%, a touch softer than expected, giving the Fed the “stable enough” backdrop it needs. 

Income rose, spending softened, and inflation didn’t misbehave… exactly the recipe that keeps liquidity expectations intact. 

Consumer sentiment helped reinforce that footing: the University of Michigan survey ticked up, and long-term inflation expectations slipped. 

The improvement was modest, but it signaled the consumer isn’t cracking even as price fatigue lingers.

Regulators added their own catalyst. 

FDIC and OCC rolled back the post-crisis guardrails on leveraged lending, shifting more risk-taking back onto bank balance sheets and reopening a lane long dominated by private credit. 

Near-term, that supports credit creation; longer-term, it raises the stakes if underwriting loosens too far.

Taken together, the market’s read is simple.

The cut may be priced in, but Powell’s roadmap is the only thing that will move positioning from here.

Washington delivered a three-part policy swing today, each carrying its own signal for long-term federal commitments, regulatory risk, and political positioning.

The House moved forward on three Social Security bills that sound administrative but touch the fiscal core of the program. 

Renaming the retirement ages (“minimum,” “standard,” “maximum” benefit ages) aims to shift claiming behavior, small changes that ripple through decades of payout math. 

Paired with new fraud-reduction mandates and automatic SSN replacements for affected children, the package points to a quieter theme: 

Congress trying to plug future leakage in a system serving 300 million people. Investors hear “slightly lower long-run liabilities,” even if the impact is incremental.

Meanwhile, vaccine advisers scrapped the universal hepatitis B birth-dose recommendation, defying decades of public-health guidance. 

Vaccine makers dipped on the headline, but the market read something broader. 

Regulatory volatility entering a sector typically treated as stable. 

When healthcare rules swing this fast, insurers, hospitals, and pharma all adjust their risk frameworks.

And then the optics story.

President Trump turned the World Cup draw into a geopolitical stage, receiving FIFA’s inaugural Peace Prize and claiming he has “settled eight wars.” 

Symbolism aside, global-leadership narratives shape how investors price U.S. soft power and geopolitical premium… a reminder that sentiment doesn’t move only on data.

Washington wasn’t subtle today, and neither were the signals it sent into the market.

The global tape tightened today as Washington, Moscow, and Europe each pushed the geopolitical map in directions markets can’t ignore.

The clearest shift came from the Pentagon, which privately set a 2027 deadline for Europe to take over most of NATO’s conventional defense load. 

The ask isn’t new, but the timeline is. 

If the U.S. threatens to step back from planning roles, Europe’s defense spending, bond issuance, and energy-security hedging all get pulled forward. 

A tighter fiscal stance in the U.S. often shows up first in Europe’s yield curve.

At the same time, the White House’s new National Security Strategy accused the EU of “civilisational erasure,” rhetoric that landed in Europe like a Kremlin press release. 

Tone aside, markets heard the real message: transatlantic policy coordination is getting noisier, which means geopolitical risk premia across European FX won’t compress anytime soon.

France added another wrinkle when U.S. ambassador Charles Kushner sought a jailhouse visit with former president Nicolas Sarkozy. 

It’s small-bore politics, but symbolic, reminding investors that Washington’s support for Europe’s conservative blocs is now part of the diplomatic toolkit.

And Russia kept pressure high. 

Putin said Moscow will take Donbas “by force” if Ukraine doesn’t withdraw, a signal that peace talks aren’t anywhere near resolution. 

Defense stocks stay bid, energy traders keep route risk priced in, and volatility floors remain sticky.

When global politics fractures into parallel tracks, markets trade the divergence, not the dialogue.

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The market spent the day marking time, not making decisions. 

Claims came in soft, ADP remained weak, and layoffs crossed a million, but nothing altered the consensus: a 25-bp cut on Dec. 10 is still the baseline. 

With global yields nudging higher and tech’s leadership wobbling, traders are letting the tape move sideways into the meeting.

Tomorrow’s PCE gives the final read before the Fed, and the last chance for the data to surprise a market that has already priced the outcome.