” ARRIVE [pause]or not [pause]? That is the question – Is the mind nobler when it suffers from the Swings and arrows of excessive fate, Or takes up arms against a sea of troubles, And, by resisting, ends them?” – Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” (modified) Wall Street anxiety about next week’s events will revolve more around 2:30 p.m. ET Wednesday than around 2 p.m. next two days 5%-5.25% range That decision will be made immediately at 2pm on Wednesday The probability that the Fed will add 25 basis points is 86% on Friday, compared with just 47% a month ago, According to CME Group’s FedWatch tracker, the basis point was 1/100th of a percentage point, and what Chairman Jerome Powell said in his subsequent press conference at 2:30 p.m. ET, made investors worry. Where will Powell lean? “Is Chairman Powell going to say, ‘Is it likely that we pause now and assess what the economy is going to do?’ Or does he really say ‘Oh, and there’s more work to be done on inflation?'” Wharton Business School professor Jeremy Siegel asked on CNBC. on how the market will do next week.” One real risk for banks is that lending rates as high as 5.25% will push up yields on Treasuries and market funds. currency appreciation, prompting bank depositors to withdraw more money from banks in search of higher returns.Moreover, recent inflation numbers have provided Powell with the intellectual ammunition he needed. needed to justify a rate hike, Siegel said. Wall Street’s 4.5% In addition, the employment cost index in the first quarter rose 1.2%, higher than the Street estimate of 1%.If Powell said something like “more work to be done.” do… then that will frustrate the market,” Siegel said. In addition, if the head of the Fed suggests that the central bank may release the brakes and move to a pause in the rate hike cycle to combat inflation in order to gauge the impact of past rallies and the position of the central bank. Given the economy, stocks may be able to break through a range that has recently capped the S&P 500 at around 4,180 for the past six months. Quincy Krosby, chief global strategist at LPL Financial, is also haunted by questions around the Fed’s approach to the current macroeconomics. “What [Powell] will do? Is he determined to try to get “inflation down to the Fed’s 2% target,” or will they be content with getting to 3%? The understanding is, OK, we’re not going to hit 2% this year. But the question is do they say 3% is good enough? And we’re not going to fight it anymore.” The fact that corporate earnings in the first quarter were generally higher than expected, and recent economic signals have shown resilience, only “more more focus and drama on what the Fed will do, Gina Bolvin, president of Bolvin Wealth Management, said next week. The question mark has become a bit bigger. meeting six weeks later, June 13-14. CME FedWatch puts the June rate unchanged at 66%, but a quarter point increase to 5.25%-5.5% at 23. %. June’s rally was higher than zero. Deutsche Bank could not completely rule out the possibility of no rally, saying that “while our base case remains the May rally will be the last of this cycle when As the economy reacts to tightening so far, we see risks tilted towards another increase in June,” chief US economist Matthew Luzzetti said in a note on Friday. After June, things will get tough because of the debt ceiling debate between Capitol Hill and the White House and the risk that the economy will slow further due to tighter credit. Two other events worry investors next week: Apple’s latest earnings after the stock market close on Thursday and April’s nonfarm payrolls report on Friday. Apple’s second-quarter financial results are expected to slow from last year’s breakneck pace. The consensus among analysts surveyed by Refinitiv is that earnings per share fell about 6% to $1.43, while revenue fell slightly more than 4% to $92.98 billion. . The latest thinking on Wall Street is that the economy added about 185,000 new jobs in April, down from 236,000 in March, and the unemployment rate could rise from 3.5% to 3.6%, according to a report. FactSet data. The “important” jobs report will be as important as the Fed meeting in the eyes of Ross Mayfield, investment strategy analyst at Baird. “[W]Age is the Fed’s main (perhaps only) concern from here on. If weakness peaks through claims data initially appearing in nonfarm payrolls, a ‘pivot’ is an option. Beyond that, the key for the Fed to read on the labor market will be productivity data on Thursday,” Mayfield added.[B]Better yield data should give the Fed room to pause or ease with wage growth still well above the 2% inflation target.” Besides Apple, about 161 other companies in the S&P 500 index is expected to report its latest quarterly results next week.At 32% of the index, that is only slightly down from 35% in the week just ended.index (April) Earnings : Norwegian Cruise Line, On Semiconductor, MGM Resorts Tuesday 10am JOLTS (March) 10am Factory Orders (March) 10am Durable Goods Orders (March) Earnings: Pfizer, Marriott International, Uber Technologies, Marathon Oil, Ford Motor, Starbucks, Clorox, Advanced Micro Devices, Yum China, Lumen Technologies, Match Group , AmerisourceBergen, DuPont, Zimmer Biomet, Cummins Wed 8:15 a.m. ADP Own Payroll Report ( April) 9:45 a.m. S&P Global Services PMI (April) 10 a.m. ISM Services Index (April) 2 p.m. Fed decision 2:30 p.m. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell press conference Earnings: CVS Health, Yum Brands, Estee Lauder, Kraft Heinz, Wingstop, Qualcomm, Etsy, Zillow, MetLife, Emerson Electric, Generac, Phillips 66, Costco, Allstate, Marathon Oil Thursday 8:30 a.m. Claims weekly unemployment (week ended April 29) 8:30 a.m. Productivity Q/Q seasonally adjusted annual rate (Q1) 8:30 a.m. Unit labor cost Q/Q (Q1 ) 8:30 a.m. Balance of Trade (March) Earnings: AB InBev, Regeneron, ConocoPhillips, Paramount Global, Peloton Interactive, Shake Shack, Intercontinental Exchange, Kellogg, Apple, Dropbox, Coinbase, Block, American International Group, DoorDash , Cardinal Health, Royal Caribbean, Vulcan Materials, Stanley Black & Decker, Moderna Friday 8:30 a.m. Nonfarm Payrolls (April) Earnings: Cigna, Warner Bros. Discovery, Cboe Global Markets, Johnson Controls — Samantha Subin of CNBC, Alexander Harring, Jeff Cox and Michael Bloom contributed to this report.