This’ll be a fairly busy week for traders.

In addition to the January FOMC meeting on Wednesday, market participants will get the first estimate of Q4 US GDP on Thursday, followed Friday by the December personal income and spending breakout which’ll of course include an update on PCE prices. Also on Friday, the BLS will tally the Fed’s preferred measure of employment compensation.

The advance read on US growth will almost surely suggest the world’s largest economy ended last year in a very good place. Consensus expects 2.7% from the headline real growth print, and 3.2% from the personal spending component.

As the simple figure makes clear, Donald Trump’s inheriting a good situation. On the surface anyway, the machine’s humming along.

Yes, the “haves”-“have-nots” divide in the US is egregious and will almost surely get worse under Trump’s Larry Kudlow-inspired, supply-side gimmickry, this time set against the dawn of an honest-to-God American oligarchy comprised of big-tech’s MAGA converts. But going strictly by the BEA aggregates, America’s is truly an “exceptional” economy.

A solid growth readout on Thursday will validate the Fed’s decision to pause rate cuts a day prior. With decent Q4 growth and spending a foregone conclusion, the tradable print in the GDP release will be the quarterly core PCE readout, which presages Friday’s monthly print. The latter’s likely to show underlying price growth ran a reasonably cool 0.2% in December following a likewise tolerable pace the prior month.

Recall that CPI came in soft — or what counts as “soft” in the post-pandemic era — for December, as did PPI, some categories of which feed into PCE prices.

As noted, the market will already have Friday’s BEA release in hand — the December personal income and spending numbers are obviously included in the GDP tally, but the breakout will still be relevant. “Within the details of the GDP report, the core PCE figures will be of particular relevance as the market’s focus on gauging how far core inflation cooled in Q4 will likely dictate the bulk of the price action,” BMO’s Ian Lyngen and Vail Hartman said. “Thursday’s report will incorporate the December core PCE numbers, which are released on Friday morning, impl[ying] the monthly figures will be less potentially market-moving, even as the details provide context for the distribution of monthly gains during the quarter, an important nuance given the assumption that the upside seen in October had slowed by the end of the year,” they added.

Admittedly, the Employment Cost Index update isn’t as crucial as it was in 2023 and 2022 given that, according to the Fed anyway, the labor market’s no longer a source of inflation pressure. Still, the FOMC eyes the quarterly ECI release closely.

As I never tire of reminding readers, it was an overshoot on that measure — not any one CPI release — which motivated Jerome Powell’s original hawkish turn in late 2021. Economists expect a pickup to 0.9% on the headline for Q4 following the softest read in three years the prior quarter.

Also on deck in the US: Conference Board confidence and the remainder of this month’s housing updates, including Case-Shiller and FHFA prices, as well as new and pending home sales.

Elsewhere, the ECB will almost surely cut rates. Again. A move this month would be the fifth reduction of the cycle, and it’ll be accompanied this week by characteristically tepid growth data, including lackluster reads out of Germany and France.

The juxtaposition between, on one side of the proverbial pond, a Fed on hold lest additional easing should overheat the domestic consumption impulse, and on the other, an ECB still cutting rates lest a lethargic growth profile should turn outright recessionary, testifies to US exceptionalism.