US stocks gained for the week, posting their first weekly gains in a month, as investors looked ahead to September’s CPI report expecting to see the start of a trend down. The S&P 500 gained 3.6% and the Dow was up by 2.7% for the week. Foreign markets were also positive with the FTSE All World Ex US up 0.7% for the week. US crude was relatively flat for the week ending at $86.79 per barrel, down from $86.87 the week prior. The yield on the 10-year Treasury ended the week higher at 3.32% up from 3.19% the week prior.
The ECB increased its key rate by 0.75%, following the 0.50% increase in July, and signaled further rises were likely over the coming months. ECB President Christine Lagarde warned that inflation was spreading beyond energy and said the ECB was ready to increase rates aggressively over the next several meetings.
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell made comments at a virtual conference hosted by the Cato Institute that the central bank is squarely focused on bringing down high inflation. “It is very much our view, and my view, that we need to act now forthrightly, strongly, as we have been doing, and we need to keep at it until the job is done.”
Russia’s state-owned energy company, Gazprom, halted all exports via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, citing maintenance work that would halt flows for three days. However, Gazprom on Friday cited an oil leak for the indefinite shutdown of the pipeline.