Brian Stewart, seeking Alpha's Director of News. Welcome back to Wall Street Roundup.

Great to be here. Set the stage for us. What's top of mind for you as we start September,

a shortened trading week. Talk to us.

Yeah, we're talking themes. I think the jobs data is coming out. We're recording this Thursday.

So listeners will probably have a little bit more information than we do right now about what the job state is going to say.

That puts into the frame of the Federal Reserve. Currently, there's like a 97% chance

according to the Fedwatch tool that the Fed's going to cut rates in September. That's been

inching higher recently. So it was kind of in the mid 80s as of last week, but has now kind of reached

the level of inevitability.

Obviously, the idea of a rate cut has become highly politicized.

The Fed is basically at war with the president.

So maybe having this cut happen might relieve some of that tension that might give markets

a little relief, not to mention the relief that's going to come with the idea that

rates are going to be, rates are going to be lower.

One issue, though, is the inflation statistics remain kind of unmovable.

You haven't seen those metrics show much relief.

You're seeing inflation, the PCE last week showing just under 3%, 2.9% annual growth.

Next week we got CPI coming out, probably going to show something very similar.

So you see the Fed facing the sticking inflation with the tariff impact still TBD.

Meanwhile, the jobs data has started to underwhelm to the point where rate cuts are becoming

inevitable.

So that tension is going to be critical for the next couple weeks.

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