This has the potential to be a lively week on the macro-market front, even without what’ll almost surely be an incessant barrage of contradictory headlines out of the Mideast.

In addition to the April FOMC meeting, likely Jerome Powell’s swan song as chair, a bevy of US data’s due, as are earnings from five of the most important corporate entities on the planet.

On the data front, the headliner comes courtesy of the BEA, which’ll offer a first guess at Q1 US GDP growth on Thursday, alongside personal income and spending data for March and PCE prices for the first month of the war.

Economists expect 2.2% from the advance read on GDP. That’d be a sharp acceleration from the government shutdown-blighted Q4 when, according to the final tally, the world’s largest economy barely expanded at all.

Spending probably slowed. It’s business investment — read: Data center outlays and other AI-related capex — propping things up.

The personal spending print for March, which’ll be released simultaneously with the GDP estimate, is expected to show a marked pickup, but real spending — i.e., stripping out the price impact of the surge in gas prices — will show a far slower gain.

That said, I’d be remiss not to remind you that the retail sales control group held up very well last month, suggesting pump prices haven’t yet deterred discretionary spending to the extent feared.

As for the PCE price readouts, consensus is looking for 0.3% from the MoM core print and 3.2% YoY.

As the figure shows, an as-expected YoY read would represent the briskest pace of underlying price growth on the Fed’s preferred gauge since January of 2024. (Don’t worry: Kevin Warsh is no “sock puppet.”)

Note from the figure that the monthly pace of recent core PCE readouts was toasty even before the war. Indeed, as BMO’s US rates team remarked, a consensus MoM read on Thursday would mean core PCE averaged a 0.4% MoM gain in Q1, the quickest average quarterly gain in two years.

On Friday, ISM manufacturing’s due. That’ll be eyed very closely for a number of reasons, not least of which is that March’s release showed the price index soaring to a totally untenable 78.3.

Any further upside on that gauge would suggest input cost pressures aren’t just pervasive, they’re universal.

Additionally, a consensus read on the ISM headline would mark the fourth straight month in expansion territory for the marquee measure of US factory activity, adding to evidence that America’s manufacturing recession ended this year.

Finally, and relatedly, the semi surge discussed at length here suggests the ISM headline “should” soar to 60 or better in fairly short order (not this week, of course, but soon enough). Color me skeptical on that.

Also on the US docket this week, in order of importance: Conference Board confidence (seen at 89 on Tuesday), ECI for Q1 on Thursday, housing starts just ahead of the Fed on Wednesday and updates on the national home price gauges (Tuesday).

Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft all report on Wednesday afternoon, about an hour after Powell finishes up his last press conference as Fed chair. Apple’s on deck Thursday, as are rate decisions from the BoE and ECB, both seen on hold.