Weekly Market Commentary January 12th to January 16th 2026

Inflation was the big news of the week with both consumer and producer prices being released. On the consumer side, the year-over-year CPI for December came in at 2.7%, matching November’s. Stripping out food and energy, the year-over-year Core CPI came in slightly lower at 2.6%, also matching November’s. The producer side told a different story. The year-over-year PPI for October and November (a combined release) came in at 3.0%, up from 2.7% from September, which was the last official release due to the Government work stoppage. Core PPI for the same period came in even worse at 3.5% when 2.5% was expected. This is not exactly news the Fed wants to hear as they battle to bring inflation to 2% and strengthen the faltering employment situation.

Elsewhere this week, we also received the November Retail Sales report which showed the continued resiliency of the consumer. A rather large surprise to the upside was in store, with a +0.6% reported when the estimate was for +0.4% and October’s was flat. Removing autos from the equation gave us an equally good result, coming in at +0.5% when +0.3% was expected.

One final statistic worth mentioning is Weekly Initial Jobless Claims. We’ve talked here about this number being the “canary in the coalmine” for the employment situation and how it has come in slightly higher than its long-term average in 2025. But this past week saw it dipping below 200k for only the fourth time since the pandemic. Will this turn into a trend? Or is it just an anomaly and claims will be back to their 225k-250k range next week? Stay tuned.

In the markets, equities all finished slightly down on the week. The S&P 500 closed at 6,940, or down 0.4%; the Dow Jones Industrials closed at 49,359, or down 0.3%; and the NASDAQ lost 0.7%, closing at 23,515. In fixed income, the yield curve barely moved this week with the 2-year, 10-year, and 30-year U.S. Treasury yields all closing just slightly higher. The 10-year finished the week at 4.23%.

Next week will be holiday-shortened and will provide us with Personal Consumption Expenditures, the S&P Services and Manufacturing PMI’s, Pending Home Sales, and a revision to third quarter GDP.