Last week never really settled down, and it closed with all three indices lower for a second week running even after a strong Friday. This week starts quietly by comparison, nothing major is due out of the US today, but that quiet is only the calm before Friday, when new Fed chair Kevin Warsh delivers his first keynote address at Jackson Hole. Wednesday’s GDP and PCE double-header is the last real data point standing between here and there, and how markets read it will shape how much room Warsh has to move the needle on Friday.

In focus

DAX

The DAX spent most of last week grinding lower before finally snapping a four-session losing streak on Friday, up 0.56% to close at 26,137. Adidas (+2.28%), BMW (+1.66%), and Hochtief (+1.55%) led the bounce, while Qiagen (-3.03%), MTU Aero Engines (-1.95%), and Fresenius Medical Care (-1.83%) dragged the other way. Even with Friday’s recovery, the index still shed about 1.2% on the week, its worst showing since the pullback from record highs the week before. Tuesday brings the final read on German Q2 GDP alongside the Ifo Expectations survey, both due before the US session opens, and they’re the closest thing to a domestic catalyst the DAX gets all week. Everything else is imported: the same US yield and Fed-positioning story that’s been driving every major index since the middle of the month, now with a five-day wait until Warsh speaks.

Dow

The Dow had the roughest single session of the week on Thursday, down roughly 700 points, 1.3%, as the 30-year Treasury yield pushed back up to 5.24% and Walmart’s earnings, out that morning, showed consumers making real trade-offs against high gas prices, with the stock falling more than 9% on the day. Friday reversed a good chunk of it: the Dow added 517.80 points, 1%, to close at 53,277.01 as bond yields eased back and risk appetite returned. That still left the index down 0.8% for the week, its second consecutive weekly loss. There’s no scheduled Dow-moving data until Wednesday, when the second estimate of Q2 GDP lands alongside the Atlanta Fed’s first GDPNow read for Q3, giving markets a rare same-day look at where growth has been and where the Fed’s own tracking model thinks it’s heading next. Thursday’s jobless claims and the start of Jackson Hole itself round out the back half of the week, but Friday’s keynote is what the whole week is really pricing toward.

Nasdaq

The Composite took the hardest hit of the three all week, falling 2.1% even after Friday’s 0.4% gain to 26,180.45. Thursday’s session was the low point, down about 1% as the same yield spike that hit the Dow landed harder on long-duration growth names, and Walmart’s consumer-spending warning added a second reason to sell risk on the same day. Nothing scheduled this week touches the Nasdaq directly until Wednesday’s PCE print, but it’s the one that matters most for this index specifically: PCE is the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, it’s forecast to accelerate to 0.3% for July, and a hot number paired with a downward GDP revision would be the kind of hot-inflation, slowing-growth combination that makes rate-sensitive tech harder to hold. Warsh inherits whatever picture Wednesday paints, and Friday’s speech is where markets find out how he reads it.

Elsewhere this week

Bitcoin was one of the standout movers Friday, surging alongside the broader risk-on close even as gold stayed pressured by the same rising real yields that have weighed on it most of the month. EURUSD has had little reason to move on its own with the calendar this thin early in the week, and is likely to stay that way until Wednesday’s US data gives it a direction. Oil remains the wildcard: WTI pushed to around $86 a barrel on the Iran “economic warfare” story that flared up mid-month, and any fresh headline there could move index sentiment faster than the scheduled data will.

The calendar

Today is quiet, just the Chicago Fed National Activity Index and a scheduled appearance from Treasury Secretary Bessent, with no major US releases. Tuesday brings German Q2 GDP (final) and Ifo Expectations before the bell, plus the weekly ADP employment change and Richmond Fed Manufacturing Index in the US session. Wednesday is the week’s real data day: US durable goods, the second Q2 GDP estimate, and the July PCE print all land before the open, with Atlanta Fed’s Q3 GDPNow updating alongside them. Thursday marks the start of the Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium itself, running through Saturday, alongside weekly jobless claims. Friday is the week’s actual centrepiece: Kevin Warsh’s first keynote as Fed chair, under this year’s theme of “Financial Innovation: Implications for Payments and Policy,” lands the same morning as the preliminary annual revision to US Non-Farm Payrolls. A new Fed chair’s first real public framing of how he sees policy is a rarer event than any single data print, and it’s the one thing this week that markets have had no prior read on at all.

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