The week’s main event will finally arrive on Friday, as Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen will speak before the latest economic symposium hosted by the Kansas City Fed in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
The topic of Yellen’s speech is expected to be financial stability, often called the “third mandate” of the Fed, and baseline expectations are that Yellen will not use this opportunity to signal any plans about Fed policy in the coming months.
A topic of discussion in the run-up to Yellen’s speech this week has also been the possibility that this is Yellen’s final speech as Fed chair at the annual symposium, as her term expires in February and President Donald Trump has not yet made clear if he intends to nominate Yellen to a second term.
Were Trump to decline to nominate Yellen to a second term, she would be just the third Fed chair since 1934 to serve one term at the top of the central bank.
Elsewhere on the calendar on Friday, we’ll get the July report on durable goods orders in the morning, which are expected to drop sharply from the prior month. The earnings calendar will be open as no major companies are expected to report results.
Markets will also keep an eye on the Gulf of Mexico, where Hurricane Harvey now appears set to be the first major hurricane — that is, a storm of category 3 intensity or higher — since Wilma hit Florida in October 2005.
As of 2:45 p.m. ET on Thursday afternoon the National Hurricane Center was forecasting winds of 125 mph as Harvey approaches the Texas coast, with landfall expected Friday evening. Rainfall amounts in excess of 20 inches are expected along some areas of the Texas coast.
Amazon’d
And so it begins.
On Monday, Amazon (AMZN) will close its deal to buy Whole Foods (WFM) and thus begin a new era of selling food for the online retail giant.
In a release on Thursday, Amazon said that among the initial changes expected at Whole Foods are lower prices on what it calls “grocery staples” at Whole Foods including — “Whole Trade bananas, organic avocados, organic large brown eggs, organic responsibly-farmed salmon and tilapia, organic baby kale and baby lettuce, animal-welfare-rated 85% lean ground beef, creamy and crunchy almond butter, organic Gala and Fuji apples, organic rotisserie chicken, 365 Everyday Value organic butter” among others.
Amazon Prime will also become Whole Foods’ rewards program and Amazon Lockers will be available in some stores.
In response to this news, grocery stocks sold off.
Among the notable losers were Kroger (KR), down 6%, Supervalu (SVU), down 7%, Target (TGT), down 4%, Costco (COST), down 3%, and CVS (CVS), down almost 3%.