Good evening, this is Markets Desk with your close of business briefing.
Consumer sentiment is back in the spotlight after a long-running survey showed Americans feeling worse than ever about their financial well-being. The White House pushed back hard, calling the data misleading, but the disconnect between official economic messaging and how households actually feel on the ground remains a real and persistent tension for policymakers.
Shifting to the Fed, the Board released minutes from its discount rate meetings held on April twentieth and twenty-ninth of this year. While the discount rate itself held steady, the release signals the Fed is continuing its deliberate, data-dependent posture as it weighs inflation persistence against softening consumer confidence — exactly the kind of tightrope walk that keeps bond traders on edge.
And over at Uber, the company's president and chief operating officer Andrew Macdonald is raising serious questions about AI spending after the company burned through its entire two thousand twenty-six artificial intelligence budget in just four months. That kind of cost blowout at one of Silicon Valley's most AI-dependent businesses is a warning shot for the broader sector about whether the returns on generative AI investment are actually materializing.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
