The week of May 26 to May 29, 2026 runs four sessions after the Memorial Day close on Monday. Two releases set the rate path: the April PCE deflator on Friday May 29 and the minutes from the May 7 FOMC meeting on Wednesday May 28. Both will be read against Chair Powell’s “few more months of data” framing from the May press conference.
The Tuesday slate is the underrated half of the week. April new home sales prints at 10:00 ET alongside the March S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller twenty-city home price index and the Conference Board consumer confidence May reading. New home sales matter beyond housing here because builder discounting has been the primary channel by which higher mortgage rates show up in the real economy. The March Case-Shiller annual growth rate held near 3.9% year over year. A flat or down April reading would be the first since 2023.
Wednesday’s FOMC minutes for May 7 are the policy read. The meeting itself was unanimous to hold at 4.25 to 4.50% with Powell flagging “elevated uncertainty” on tariff pass-through. The minutes typically expose the dispersion the statement smooths over. Two questions sit on the page: how many participants want to wait through the summer before considering a cut, and how participants are mapping tariff-driven goods price increases against the core PCE trend they actually target.
Thursday brings the second estimate of Q1 GDP, pending home sales for April, and the weekly jobless claims print. The Q1 advance read came in at an annualized 1.7%. Revisions usually run within two-tenths. Continuing claims, which ticked to 1.79 million the week of May 9, are the labor-market series to watch given the slow drift higher.
Friday’s PCE deflator is the data point with the most rate-path weight. Headline PCE ran 2.3% year over year in March. Core PCE sat at 2.6%. Fed funds futures coming into the week were pricing roughly 1.4 cuts by year-end. A core print at or above 0.3% month over month would push that lower and lift the long end of the curve. A 0.1% print would do the opposite. The University of Michigan final May consumer sentiment and five-year inflation expectations release the same morning and are the secondary read.