Wednesday’s Final Takeaways: PCE Cools, TSM Weighs Texas Investment

back to Market on Close. I'm Marley Kayden here in Chicago alongside Sam Bodies at the New York Stock Exchange. Here's some final thoughts on the session today. Inflation came in later than expected in August, with the headline PCEsir the month and 3.4% from a year ag That was below economists forecasts. Core PCE, which strips out food and energy, rose just 2/10 of a percent monthly 3% annually. Thats also. The sof inflation data takes some pressure off the fed to raise rates again in October, although inflation remains above the Fed's 2% target and consumer spending was strong, rising 9/10 of a percent in August. We did see an early immediately following thes report, but it did give back those gains throughout the session. And we saw the S&P, the Dow and the Russell all close in the red. Also, the FTC opening an inquiry into potential dangers posed by major AI companies OpenAI and anthropic, along with other unnamed companies, are being investigated ove how they use data and how their business practices may affect competition, putting the rapidly growing AI iy under greater regulatory scrutiny. The comes as companies expand across AI models, cloud computing and enterprise software, raising questions about the safety and the control overa and technology for investors. The investigation adds another of regulatory risk to an AI trade that has already attracted enormous amounts of capital, and increasingly involves partnerships between AI companies and the biggest technology platforms. This also comes in the wake of anthr CEO Dario Amodei calling for stronger government oversight and some breaking news to tie in here. We were talking to Kevin Green about this move we saw in alphabet. Alphabet released its Gemini for argon model, with the company saying that it is its most advanced AI model yet. But Bloomberg is reporting that there is skepticism among employees about some of its capabilities, particularly when it comes to coding. That led to small sell off coming into the close, but it has rebounded after hours. It's up about a percent and a half post market. But Sam, what c your eye during the session today? Yeah. Look, a couple ofable stories in the tech space w were largely overlooked. Taiwan semi reportedly thinking about a potentialnvestment in Texas to expand chipduction in the US. That's acc to Reuters, which said this would be in addition to the $265 billion it's already spending in Arizona. The plans apparentlyn't set in stone, but Taiwanese media did make mention of this this week as well. The moves are seen as part of a broader US strategy to de-risk away from Taiwan and set up more manufacturing here in the US to help jobs. Andparaa sa it's teamed up with Huawei to make programing tools for the Huawei's Ascend chips. Now, the AI lab says it's making thee to download. It com two weeks after Huawei ca with its next gen AI processors, and this is being seen as the latest to deepen partnerships with homegrown Chinese firms as an alternative to Nvidia and compete with anthropic and those open AI models as well. But it didn't seem to affect t Nvidia stock today. Too much M heading into tomorrow though, what are you going to be looking out for. We'll get earnings from Nike. I mean the company has been under enormous pressure this year. They're down more than 44% trading near itst levels in more than a decade. Wall Street's looking EPS of $0.44 on revenue of $11.7 billion. The report likely less about whether they can beat those numbers, and more about whether Eiot Hill's turnaround is beginning to show up in sales stabilization and g. Sam, of course, focus on North American sales after aong period of weakness a Greater China as a potential pressure point for Nike. That one's of note to me. What will you be watching for? Looking out for those PMIs, particularly because the S&P global flash data last week did send those ten year yie higher. And of course that isn't something that typically happens. So we'll see what the officialnumbl read on S&P as well. That will be accompanied by more fed speak. So let's see what they have to say particularly off the back of the PCE earlier this morning. Andow is it October already a new month a new quarter. We turn the page. They say Molly that it's meant to be a better month than September. We'll see. We shall see. But that is going to do it for us today. On market on close for Sam bodies. I'm Marley Kaden. Be sure to download our Schwab Network app available in the Apple App Store, and you can tune in 24 over seven on