The S&P 500 closed at a record above 7,800 because the Federal Reserve probably will not raise rates, which is a curious thing to celebrate.
Good morning and welcome to today's market chronicle. It's Friday, August 14, 2026.
July producer prices landed flat month over month against a forecast of plus two tenths, 4.7 percent year over year against 4.9 expected, and the tape did what the tape does. The S&P 500 added 0.65 percent to 7,798.99, its first close above 7,800 ever, the Nasdaq took 0.81 percent to 26,803.03, and the Dow contributed a polite 70 points. Le tout-Wall Street is calling this the soft landing, finally. Read the sentence again, though. The rally was not about cuts. It was relief that Kevin Warsh's committee, which held at 3.50 to 3.75 with three dissents in favor of hiking, may now decline to make things worse in September. That is the bull case. Not policy will help, but policy may refrain. Hammack, Kashkari and Logan have spent weeks arguing that wholesale inflation with a 4.7 handle is not a rounding error, and their reward for being early is to be filed as the awkward wing of what the chair has called a good family fight. So who actually won here? Anyone already long who needed no reason. And everyone is pretending not to notice that a 4.7 print used to be the crisis, not the relief.
Retail sales at 8:30, expected up two or three tenths depending on which desk you ask, with the ex-autos line carrying the real information after last month's decline. Then industrial production, business inventories, capacity utilization, the supporting cast nobody stays for. Then Michigan sentiment, expected at 54.1 from 55.2, a number that in any other decade would have been called a recession reading and is now simply Friday. The marquee earnings event is United States Antimony ($UAMY), which tells you precisely how much of August is left.
As for our own book, the honest report is that there is nothing to report. The Mosaic Mid-Horizon sleeve rebalanced yesterday, August 13, and is not finished, since the desk is still working toward more Asia exposure and lower fees. Least cinematic sentence I will write today. It is also the point. A rebalance is not a view on retail sales at 8:30. It is maintenance, done on a calendar, and its finest quality is that it is dull.
Elsewhere, gold is holding above 4,400 dollars, near ten-week highs, WTI sits around 81 dollars, the 10-year is near 4.65 percent after flirting with 4.75 earlier in the week, and S&P futures are flat to a rounding error (no clean print in front of me, call it unchanged). Bitcoin is near 63,800, roughly half its 126,000 peak, the cockroach in the basement of the record-highs story that nobody wants to carry upstairs.
Records above, the consumer at 54, digital gold cut in half. The wonderful world of finance. Have a good one.