{"id":235155,"date":"2026-01-13T03:29:14","date_gmt":"2026-01-13T03:29:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/235155\/"},"modified":"2026-01-13T03:29:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-13T03:29:14","slug":"economic-week-ahead-january-12-16","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/235155\/","title":{"rendered":"ECONOMIC WEEK AHEAD: January 12\u201316"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

If economists did weather reports, this week’s forecast would\u00a0call\u00a0for a data blizzard. Yet visibility should improve as\u00a0the\u00a0markets get much-anticipated readings on inflation, retail sales, and industrial production ahead of the Fed’s next policy meeting on January 28.<\/p>\n

Few economists expect Fed Chair Jerome Powell and the rest of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) to ease\u00a0monetary\u00a0policy again later this month. Neither do we. This week’s data could confirm or alter this conventional wisdom\u2014starting with the December consumer price index (Tue).<\/p>\n

The Fed plot thickened last week after President Donald Trump directed Fannie Mae\u00a0and\u00a0Freddie Mac\u00a0to buy $200 billion of mortgage bonds. It’s the kind of monetary function normally reserved for the Fed. It struck many as a ploy to revive quantitative easing<\/a>. The announcement came as Fed Governor Stephen Miran told Bloomberg he’s looking for 150 basis points<\/a>\u00a0of rate cuts this year.<\/p>\n

The only thing missing, of course, is substantially lower inflation and a recession to require such aggressive easing. This week features\u00a0speeches by several Fed officials that\u00a0may shed light\u00a0on the talking Fed heads\u2019 thinking, starting with\u00a0New York Fed President John Williams (Mon)\u00a0and followed by\u00a0Governors Miran (Wed), Michael Barr (Thu), Michelle Bowman (Fri), and Vice Chair Philip Jefferson (Fri).<\/p>\n

Here’s a look at this week’s data releases most likely to influence the timing and extent of any further Fed rate cuts:<\/p>\n

(1)\u00a0Inflation. Since the 43-day government shutdown in October and November, investors have struggled to gain a clear view of inflation. Many investors took the 2.7% y\/y CPI gain in November, down from 3.0% in October, with a few grains of salt (chart).\u00a0The\u00a0shutdown\u00a0likely\u00a0distorted the\u00a0Bureau of Labor Statistics\u2019 (BLS)\u00a0efforts to collect price data. This raises the stakes for the latest CPI and PPI readings. They\u2019ll be among the last pivotal releases ahead of the FOMC\u2019s January 28 rate decision.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The CPI (Tue) inflation rate may have moderated slightly. The Cleveland Fed’s\u00a0Inflation Nowcasting<\/a>\u00a0model expects a 0.2% m\/m\u00a0increase, or 2.6% y\/y. As the PPI (Wed) is for November, the data are of less utility. November import\/export prices (Thu) also hit the tape.<\/p>\n

(2)\u00a0Retail sales. Retail sales (Wed) likely increased slightly in November\u00a0following October’s flat reading\u00a0(chart).\u00a0Overall, we think consumption remains on\u00a0solid footing despite rising cost-of-living pressures and weak employment. Other key updates on demand this week include December existing home sales (Wed) and mortgage applications (Wed) for the week ending\u00a0January\u00a09.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

(3) Jobless claims. We expect layoffs to remain low. That’s surely been the main takeaway from recent trends in initial unemployment claims (Thu) (chart). Even if demand for labor is cooling in some areas, the AI-driven job market implosion many fear has yet to arrive.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

(4)\u00a0Composite economic indicators\u00a0&\u00a0business surveys. The composite cyclical indicators (Thu) for December should show that the coincident index remains at a record high, while the (mis)leading index continues to fall. Also, given the lags in hard official data,\u00a0National Federation of Independent Business\u2019\u00a0Small Business Optimism Index for December (Tue) should be informative after having risen to 99 in November. Later this week, the New York and Philadelphia\u00a0Federal Reserve banks\u00a0release their January business surveys (Thu).<\/p>\n

S&P 500 forward earnings per share is our favorite coincident indicator. It has been rising faster in recent weeks, reaching record highs (chart).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\ud83d\udca1<\/p>\n

Join the discussion with Ed below! To leave comments or questions, log in to the Yardeni QuickTakes website and post them at the end of the QuickTakes article. Paid members’ contributions may be featured in our segment, “Ed Answers Your Questions”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If economists did weather reports, this week’s forecast would\u00a0call\u00a0for a data blizzard. Yet visibility should improve as\u00a0the\u00a0markets get…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":235156,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[114,184,85,46],"class_list":{"0":"post-235155","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economy","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-israel"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235155\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}