10 Things You Need to Know: October 14, 2025
Reuters, WSJ
October 8, 2025
Federal Reserve officials acknowledged increased risks to the job market at their September meeting, prompting a quarter-point rate cut, but officials remain divided on the pace of further cuts as persistent inflation remains a significant concern. Meeting minutes showed that most officials supported additional easing this year, but the “dot plot” reveals a nearly-even split among individual members over whether there will be two or three more cuts in 2025.
WSJ
October 8, 2025
The federal government recorded a $1.8 trillion budget deficit for fiscal year 2025, nearly unchanged from the previous year, despite an increase in tariff revenue, according to the CBO. Customs duties reached $195 billion, compared with $77 billion during fiscal 2024.
Reuters, The New York Times, WSJ
October 9, 2025
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics will recall some furloughed employees to publish the September Consumer Price Index despite a government shutdown. This ensures Social Security payments, which are tied to inflation data, can be calculated. The report, originally scheduled for October 15, is expected to be released this month.
Capital Economics
October 8, 2025
We expect euro-zone GDP growth to remain fairly slow in the coming years. Germany’s fiscal stimulus should provide a temporary and modest boost, but we don’t think that it will do much to raise growth prospects elsewhere. Meanwhile, we forecast inflation to undershoot the 2% target as energy prices fall, and wage growth slows further. This will prompt the ECB to cut interest rates next year, taking the deposit rate down from 2% currently to 1.5%.
Bloomberg
October 13, 2025
Chinese exports rose 8.3% in September from a year earlier to $328.6 billion, the biggest monthly total so far in 2025. There’s no slowdown yet in the record-breaking flood of goods leaving China’s shores. Shipments to the US plunged 27% — the sixth month of double-digit declines — a slump more than offset by strong growth in sales to regions like the European Union. In total, exports to non-US destinations grew 14.8%, the fastest since March 2023.
Barron’s
October 13, 2025
Altogether, OpenAI is now on the hook for roughly $1 trillion of technology spending. A trillion dollars is, to put it succinctly, nuts. It’s roughly 3.4% of 2024 U.S. gross domestic product and about a quarter of all nonresidential private investment. During the heady dot-com era, from 1995 to 2000, total tech IPO proceeds came to $209 billion. In other words, the best-known financial bubble of recent times raised just a fifth of the money OpenAI needs to fund its ambitious rollout.
Barron’s
October 13, 2025
In the third quarter, S&P 500 earnings are expected to grow 8.8% compared with the same period last year. Rate cuts should help economically sensitive sectors, including financials and industrials. As a result, analysts project 6.4% annual sales growth for the S&P 500 from the end of 2025 through 2027, according to FactSet, with earnings growing at a 14% annual clip.
WSJ, Reuters
October 9, 2025
New York Federal Reserve President John Williams and San Francisco’s Mary Daly have signaled support for more rate cuts to cushion a weakening labor market, saying inflation pressures from tariffs remain limited. Fed Governor Michael Barr, however, urged caution, citing persistent inflation risks and uncertainty amid a government data blackout. The divide sets up a contentious debate ahead of the Fed’s Oct. 28-29 policy meeting.
FT
October 10, 2025
Global investors are pouring unprecedented amounts into equity funds that exclude the US, with over $175 billion flowing into ‘ex-US’ global equity mutual funds and ETFs in the past month, surpassing inflows to funds that include US stocks. The trend reflects a desire to diversify away from US market concentration and manage risks such as political uncertainty and high valuations.
Bloomberg
October 7, 2025
US electric companies will spend almost $208 billion in 2025 and more than $1.1 trillion over the next five years on the power grid, according to industry group Edison Electric Institute. For comparison, investor-owned utilities made capital expenditures of $765 billion in the five-year period through the end of 2024.