Week Ahead: Policy Crossroads, Inflation Checkpoints, and a High-Stakes Summit
Global Mood: Calm Before Another Potential Storm
Investors enter the second full week of August with nerves steadier than they were a fortnight ago, yet hardly settled. Friday’s flirtation with record highs in tech-heavy indices, a fresh upside pop in gold futures, and a modest pullback in oil all underscore one truth: positioning remains razor-thin and headline-driven. Against that backdrop, three items dominate the calendar—Tuesday’s U.S. CPI release, the Reserve Bank of Australia’s policy call that same day, and Friday’s unprecedented Trump-Putin meeting in Alaska. Around those pillars swirl a host of secondary catalysts—China’s raft of July activity data, the looming August 12 deadline for an updated U.S.–China tariff truce, and a dense UK data docket that could reposition sterling bulls.
