The Market in Pictures, September 19

Our team looks at a lot of research throughout the day. Here are a handful that we think are good summations of investor activity, from FOMC outlooks to inflation and rates, consumer spending across income and wealth levels, market and earnings breadth, and US markets vs. foreign. Have a great weekend!

John Luke: The Fed has resumed cutting, it’s a question of how much

Data as of 09.17.2025

Beckham: though likely just a return to normal from restrictive, as both inflation and employment are pretty close to where they’d like them

Data as of 09.16.2025

Jake: and a majority of fund managers accepting that falling all the way to the 2% inflation target seems unlikely

Data as of 09.17.2025

Brett: While the period between the global financial crisis and COVID stuck pretty close to that 2% target

Data as of 09.15.2025

Brett: the services contribution by itself seems to have found a floor above the 2% level  

Data as of 09.15.2025

John Luke: The input costs to owning a home have been a huge contributor to persistently higher living costs

Source: ICE as of 09.16.2025

Ten: and lately, during a time of weak employment growth

Chart via RenMac as of 09.15.2025

Brian: and a growing split in spending across differing levels of income

Chart via WSJ as of 09.17.2025

Joseph: The trend of higher proportional spending at the high end is not new, just reinforced and expanding

Source: Bespoke as of 09.08.2025

Brian: with the balance sheet of the average consumer quite healthy, and supportive of continued spending growth

Source: TS Lombard as of 09.17.2025

Brad: Speaking of two different worlds, dominance by megacap tech stocks has been supported by the dramatic edge in earnings growth

Source: NewEdge Wealth as of 09.13.2025

John Luke: with no change in that dominance through the first half of this year

Source: Apollo as of 09.16.2025

Brad: That said, small caps as measured by the Russell 2000 finally made a new high after a long period of absence

Source: Bespoke as of 09.19.2025

Beckham: but smaller stocks have years of underperformance to try and overcome

Data as of 09.15.2025

Dave: The hope for small-cap investors is that more accommodative Fed policy should help

Source: Strategas as of 09.17.2025

Dave: but despite progress of late, most stocks haven’t been able to keep up with the index over any recent period

John Luke: As far as overall earnings, not only have the results been good but the outlooks have been even better

John: with profit margins a primary contributor to equity performance both in 2025 and in recent years

John Luke: US companies have continually invested more in their businesses than their European counterparts

Data as of 09.12.2025

Mark: and while Euro companies may not see the value, foreign investors as a whole seem to appreciate the benefits of US companies investing in the future

Source: Bloomberg as of 09.18.2025

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