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Investors will be watching for the release on Wednesday of the Federal Reserve’s minutes from its September rate-setting meeting, which should offer insight into deliberations among officials about how many times the central bank will cut interest rates again this year.
At the Fed’s September meeting, policymakers cut its key interest rate for the first time since December 2024, by 0.25 percentage points. Through its Summary of Economic Projections, the Federal Open Market Committee also signalled that it saw the possibility of at least two additional quarter-point cuts by the end of December.
The September decision was notable for being almost unanimous — there was just one dissenting vote, from President Donald Trump’s appointee Stephen Miran, who wanted interest rates to be cut by 0.5 percentage points. Governors Michelle Bowman and Christopher Waller, who had dissented at the board’s previous meeting, joined the majority in September, in a show of solidarity at a time when Trump has been threatening the Fed’s independence. The minutes should offer insight into the decision to cut, and might show the extent of the debate around Miran’s proposal.
The minutes will also illuminate the shift in the Fed’s focus from inflation risks to labour market risks. Though the unemployment rate remains low, a series of weak jobs reports lay behind the committee’s decision to cut. Chair Jay Powell said after the meeting: “The labour market has softened. The case for there being a persistent inflation outbreak is less.”
Traders in the futures market are currently pricing in between one and two quarter-point cuts by the end of the year. Kate Duguid
Has gold reached the top?
Gold’s extraordinary rally has been one of the biggest stories in markets this year, with the most recent leg up leaving investors asking how much further it can go.
The price of gold — which investors often turn to as a store of value when inflation is rising — is within touching distance of $4,000 a troy ounce, having started the year just above $2,600.
Concerns about the independence of the Federal Reserve and fears that the ballooning US fiscal deficit will erode the attractiveness of US Treasuries have sent investors flocking to gold for safety. The price jumped 12 per cent in September alone, with some investors looking for havens in the face of the US federal government shutdown.
But analysts think there is further to go, partly as a function of the market’s bet that the Fed will make four quarter-point interest rate cuts between now and September 2026.
Lower interest rates tend to push the price of gold higher as investors expect a lower return from holding bonds and look to other assets. The surge has also been driven by investors piling into gold-backed exchange traded funds.
“We now expect gold to rise to $4,200 per ounce over the coming months,” UBS analysts wrote on Friday, up from a previous target price of $3,800.
“We believe lower US real interest rates, further dollar weakness and ongoing political twists will drive prices higher, pushing ETF inflows higher than we initially forecast,” they said.
Goldman Sachs analysts wrote this week that gold remained “our highest-conviction long commodity recommendation” and that the “upside risks” to their bet of $4,000 an ounce by mid-2026 had “intensified”. Emily Herbert
Business activity in India has been robust but can it last?
A widely followed survey of Indian business activity and confidence is expected to extend a string of robust readings recorded this year, but analysts are questioning how long it can last.
HSBC’s composite purchasing managers’ index for September, covering the manufacturing and services sectors, is due out on Monday. The previous reading, for August, came in at 61.9, deep inside positive territory and comfortably clear of the 50-point threshold that separates contraction from expansion.
But the pall of 50 per cent US tariffs imposed on India’s exports from the end of August is beginning to weigh on that outlook.
HSBC’s India manufacturing PMI, released earlier this week, fell to a four-month low of 57.7 in September, down from 59.3 the previous month. The data painted a mixed picture, according to economists at Goldman Sachs, with the decline suggesting that the sky-high tariffs are starting to bite. Nevertheless, the index for new export orders rose slightly, “likely due to higher demand from countries outside the US”, Goldman’s economists said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has moved to shore up domestic demand with tax cuts. However, the Indian rupee has fallen nearly 4 per cent against the dollar in 2025 and is hovering near record lows. The Reserve Bank of India on Wednesday held its benchmark repo rate at 5.5 per cent, adopting a wait-and-see approach after cutting by 1 percentage point so far this year.
India’s latest PMI data shows that “the strength of the economy observed in the first half of the year won’t last and the central bank . . . will loosen policy further,” said Shivaan Tandon, emerging markets economist at Capital Economics. Chris Kay