Welcome to Seeking Alpha's Wall Street Lunch. Our afternoon update on today's market action news and analysis.

Good afternoon. Today is Thursday, July 25th, and I'm your host Kim Khan. Our top story

so far. 2 US GDP rose at an annualized rate of 2.8% in the first measure, topping

the 2% consensus estimate and accelerating from 1.4% in

Q1. The new data continues the narrative of a resilient consumer and solid economic growth. The increase reflects more consumer spending, private inventory

investment, and non-residential fixed investment such as business spending on equipment.

Imports which are subtracted from GDP rose during the quarter.

The Q2 price index for gross domestic purchases rose 2.3% versus 3.1% in Q1.

The Personal Consumption Expenditures Index rose 2.6%, slowing from 3.4% in Q1.

Excluding food and energy prices, the PCE price index increased 2.9% down from 3.7% in the prior quarter.

Raymond James, Chief Economist Eugenio Alman says,

strong growth in real GDP during the second quarter

was achieved with much lower pricing pressures

compared to the first quarter of the year

when we had much lower economic growth but much higher prices.

This confirms that higher inflation during the first quarter was a one-off

and not something Federal Reserve officials should be concerned about when conducting monetary policy.

In addition, durable goods orders unexpectedly dropped 6.6% month on month in June,

much worse than the 0.3% increase expected and the 0.1% rise logged in May.

It was the biggest drop since the pandemic in early 2020, but core durable goods gain 0.5% from the month before compared with a

0.2% consensus and a drop of 0.1% in the prior month.

Well, S Fargo economists said that while the manufacturing environment is still struggling,

...