• Macro Monday
  • Posts
  • Rate Hikes Are Officially Back On The Table

Rate Hikes Are Officially Back On The Table

The Macro Institute's Weekly Economic Primer

Author

The Macro Institute
June 15, 2026

Don’t have time to watch the whole video? Here’s 5 Key Takeaways:

🔹May’s Payroll Report Was Incredibly Strong: The May payroll report shattered expectations. Over 170K jobs were added despite consensus being 80K added jobs. Plus, March and April payrolls were revised higher by +29K and +64K respectively.

🔹The Stock Market Still Fell On Its Release: Despite this strong report, the stock market fell significantly upon its release. This led President Trump to post his confusion online about how such a thing could happen.

🔹The Fed’s Mandate Is The Key Reason Why: The answer to this confusion boils down to the Fed’s dual mandate. The Fed is tasked with keeping prices stable around its 2% inflation target and keeping the economy at maximum employment.

🔹Inflation Is A Bigger Concern Than Employment: As the Fed tries to balance it’s dual mandate, inflation has now become a bigger concern than the employment market following the aforementioned blowout payrolls report from May.

🔹The Market Now Expects Rate HIKES In 2026: When inflation is a bigger concern than the employment market, the Fed leans toward hiking interest rates, which is exactly what the market expects for the rest of 2026.

Miss our last few videos? No worries. Here are some of the most popular 👇

Live Workshop With Francois Trahan

I have good news and bad news…

The bad news is 90% of the tickets for our annual Live Macro Investing Workshop with Francois Trahan have already sold.

Other investors, portfolio managers, and research analysts are pouncing at the opportunity to connect with and learn directly from Francois.

However… the good news is we still have 10% of our tickets remaining.

With under three weeks left until the event, it will sell out.

Seize this opportunity to learn from a Wall Street legend before it’s too late!

Macro Data Center

The Macro Week Ahead

📆 Last Week’s Data Key Takeaways

🔹 Headline CPI Hit A Multi-Year High On Energy Spike: Headline CPI rose +0.5% in May, pushing the 12-month rate to 4.2%, which is the highest since 2023. Energy accounted for over 60% of the monthly increase. Core CPI ticked up to 2.9% from 2.8% as the headline spike continues to trickle into Core CPI.

🔹 NFIB Confirmed Main Street Job Market Is Freezing: The NFIB Optimism Index fell 0.6 points in May to 95.3, remaining below its 52-year average of 98.0. Hiring plans and unfilled job openings both fell sharply, with each now sitting near levels last seen in 2016. Firms appear concerned about labor costs rather than labor quality, with the former overtaking the latter for the first time since 2013.

🔹PPI Posted Largest Final Demand Goods Increase In History: Final demand goods moved up 2.8 percent in May, the largest increase since the data was first calculated in December 2009. Eighty percent of the broad-based advance could be traced to a 10.7% jump in prices for final demand energy.

🔹 Existing Home Sales Surged To Highest Since December: Existing home sales increased by 3.2% m/m and y/y, with home sales rising to the highest level since December. May 2026 brought 4.2 million in sales, a median sales price of $429K, and 4.5 months of inventory, which was a new record high May price.

🔹 Michigan Sentiment Bounced Off Record Lows: Preliminary June consumer sentiment ticked up ~9% to 48.9, the first increase in four months, though still the second-lowest reading in data back to the 1970s. The bigger story was inflation expectations, as the one year eased to 4.6% and the 5–10 year expectations fell back sharply from 3.9% to 3.4%, erasing May's jump.

Macro Job Board

The Associate is client-facing from day one, with exposure to senior global investors, the broader Clocktower platform, and the research product itself. This opportunity is designed for someone who is interested in financial markets and wants to build a franchise over time, rather than a rotational program or narrowly defined lane.

AQR is seeking an exceptionally talented individual to join their macro strategies product specialist team. This role will give end-to-end exposure to the portfolio management process and continued evolution of AQR’s macro strategies and will include opportunities to work with senior investment professionals across the firm.

This role will work closely with the Senior Portfolio Manager to develop systematic macro strategies, focusing on alpha research, including idea generation, statistical analysis, back testing, and implementation. Must independently explore and develop new ideas while collaborating in a team-oriented environment.

What We Read This Weekend