Jackson Hole Speech Delivers

Powell's Jackson Hole speech was this week's only big ticket in terms of market movement potential and it definitely delivered. We haven't heard from Powell since 2 days before infamous August 1st jobs report. His tone logically pivoted to place incrementally more focus on the Fed's full employment mandate while repeating that the base case is for tariff-driven inflation to be--well--transitory. Combine that with his reminder that policy rates are still in restrictive territory and the takeaway was a subtle but obvious openness to consider a September cut. Traders were surprisingly surprised by this, thus making for a decent little rally in bonds. Gains arrived swiftly and hung out uneventfully through the close.