Welcome to Markets Desk, your midday read on what's moving and why.
Biotech is the headline in equities today, with a cluster of names hitting fifty-two-week highs on the first of September, two thousand twenty-six. Leading the charge is MindMed, ticker MMED, up ten percent on the session. Peers including Pulse Biosciences, Solvay, Royalty Pharma, and Apogee Biotech are all tagging fresh annual highs, suggesting broad-based momentum driven by a combination of earnings beats and regulatory progress across the sector.
Shifting to macro, Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee is pushing back against what he calls the noise surrounding artificial intelligence and its economic implications. Goolsbee wants the Fed's focus anchored in traditional fundamentals — inflation, labor markets, and the conditions facing ordinary Americans — a signal that at least one voting voice inside the central bank is wary of letting AI optimism distort the policy calculus.
And on the Social Security front, early projections suggest the two thousand twenty-seven cost-of-living adjustment is tracking above this year's two point eight percent increase. With inflation data still running warmer than the Fed's comfort zone, beneficiaries could see a meaningfully larger check next year, though the official figure won't be confirmed until October's CPI release.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
