10 Things You Need to Know: August 19, 2026
Key data releases this week include: NAHB Housing Market Index (Mon), import prices (Tue), housing starts (Tue), industrial production (Tue), FOMC meeting minutes (Wed), and leading economic indicators (Thu).
Haver
August 11, 2026
Existing home sales fell 1.7% m/m (+0.7% y/y) to 4.06 million units at an annual rate in July. The July level of sales was the lowest in three months. The consensus expected a 1.0% m/m decline in July. The nationwide median sales price fell 2.0% m/m NSA (+2.0% y/y) to $434,100.
Haver
August 12, 2026
CPI increased 0.1% m/m (3.4% y/y) following a 0.4% monthly decline in June. The core index rose 0.2% m/m (2.5% y/y) after having been unchanged in June. Consensus expectations were for a 0.1% monthly gain for the headline index and a 0.2% monthly increase for the core index.
MT Newswires
August 13, 2026
The US Producer Price Index held steady in July following a 0.1% decrease in June, compared with the 0.2% consensus estimate. PPI was up 4.7% year-over-year in July while core PPI increased by 4.2% year-over-year, both slower than their respective June rates. The year-over-year rate for PPI excluding food, energy and trade services decreased to 4.7% from 5% in the previous month.
Haver
August 14, 2026
Total retail sales fell 0.6% (+5.0% y/y) in July after rising 0.2% in June. A 0.2% m/m July increase was expected in the Action Economics Forecast Survey. Sales in the retail control group fell 0.4% (+4.6% y/y) after six consecutive m/m increases.
Barron’s
August 17, 2026
Compute is getting securitized. However, the cost to rent chips has been prone to wild swings. Early rental prices of the Nvidia H100 GPU, the workhorse of the AI economy, launched in mid-2022, run from $7 to $10 per GPU hour. By last fall, prices fell to as low as $1.70. Now, supply has tightened, and prices are up some 40% to about $2.35 per GPU hour. A typical AI data center might have about 100,000 H100s, so that volatile pricing can wreak havoc.
Barron’s
August 17, 2026
The dreaded “K-shape” in the U.S. economy looks to be easing, at least for now. And that points to solid consumer spending and economic growth in the second half of the year. But longer term, the underlying drivers of the K-shaped economy— the equity gains supporting higher-income spending and the homeownership gaps —have not necessarily dissipated
Capital Economics
August 3, 2026
In isolation, fewer annual meetings would be unlikely to have major implications for the conduct of monetary policy. But nor would they necessarily lead to more stable or higher-quality decision making. The bigger concern is the backdrop against which this change is being considered. If the Fed communicates less frequently, each meeting carries greater weight. That, in turn, makes clear and consistent communication even more important.
Bloomberg
August 17, 2026
Market bets on Federal Reserve interest-rate hikes are still too aggressive, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. “Under our baseline economic forecasts, the inflation news is more likely to improve further than to deteriorate anew as the year progresses,” economist Jan Hatzius wrote in the note. “We still think market pricing for the funds rate is too hawkish.
WSJ
August 14, 2026
S&P 500 companies reported $2.64 trillion of combined net income over the last four quarters. However, a big chunk of the earnings consisted of paper gains from marking up equity investments in other companies. On a trailing four-quarter basis, S&P 500 earnings are up 31% versus the year-earlier period, according to S&P data. That is based on GAAP net income. If Amazon and Alphabet are excluded, they’re up 24%, which is still spectacular growth.