A Quick Look at the Economic Pulse

Note: This is the first Market Report we are putting out at Elf. We aim to deliver this weekly every Monday going forward.

Defying expectations, consumers continue to buy with retail sales jumping, despite inflation and interest rate hikes. More insights on consumer spending will be clear when Walmart $WMT and Home Depot $HD post results on Tuesday.

Retail investors pour into equities, while institutional investors remain bearish and dump $19B (over the year so far) into corporate bonds, according to the Financial Times.

Eyes are focused on the Federal Reserve’s Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) price index, which shows how closely how quickly prices are rising across the economy. This report comes out Friday morning. The Core PCE is expected to go up 0.4%, just a bit from from December at 0.3%. Prices in January most likely went up 0.5%, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Other metrics of interest include the Consumer Price Index (CPI) out last week that showed inflation picked up in January, while cooling only slightly over the year to 6.4%.

On Friday, the Dow Jones and S&P 500 were both down, while the Nasdaq was up. The road has been bumpy in terms of price stability, but strong economic data from jobs to consumer spending have kept a recession at bay.

Both Goldman Sachs and Bank of America analysts expect another rate increase, potentially in March to offset inflation by the Federal Reserve.

The stock and bond market at home will be closed today (Monday) for President's Day. Brick and mortar banks, all government agencies, public libraries and the post office are closed. Most big box retailers and grocery stores will be open.

Upcoming earnings reports this week led by Walmart, also include: Home Depot, Alibaba Keurig, Dr Pepper, Live Nation, Moderna, PG&E, and Warner Bros. Discovery.

Data for this report has been compiled from Yahoo! Finance, WSJ, FactSet, Bloomberg, and the Financial Times.