Wednesday Stacks July PCE, the Second Q2 GDP Estimate and Durable Goods at 8:30 a.m. — Then Nvidia Reports After the Close

by Nora Halloran · August 24, 2026

Senior Analyst, US Market Current

The week's information does not arrive evenly. Kiplinger's economic calendar for Aug. 24-28 shows a nearly empty Monday, a housing-and-confidence Tuesday, and then a Wednesday that piles the July personal consumption expenditures price index, the second estimate of second-quarter gross domestic product and July durable goods orders into the same 8:30 a.m. ET release window. Nvidia is scheduled to report after that day's close, according to the company's own conference-call announcement. The Kansas City Fed's Jackson Hole symposium runs Aug. 27-29, per a Tech Times preview, and Kiplinger's calendar notes that Fed Chair Kevin Warsh is scheduled to speak Friday. Every one of these events is still ahead.

Compressing three federal reports into one minute is not unusual on this calendar, but it changes how the morning trades. Each release will be read against a different reference point, and the reference points currently disagree with one another about how much momentum the economy has.

Start with growth. The Bureau of Economic Analysis reported in its advance estimate that real GDP increased at a 1.5% annual rate in the second quarter, down from 2.1% in the first. The agency attributed the deceleration to a downturn in government spending and to slower investment and exports. The second estimate, scheduled for 8:30 a.m. ET Wednesday according to the BEA release, incorporates more complete source data and can revise that figure in either direction.

The same advance report carried the quarter's inflation arithmetic, and it is not a single story. The PCE price index rose at a 5.1% annual rate in the second quarter, accelerating from 4.6% in the first. The core index, which strips out food and energy, ran at 3.4%, a sharp deceleration from 4.4%. A headline measure climbing while the core measure falls points at energy and food, and it means Wednesday's monthly July print will be parsed for which of those two lines the July data confirm.

The durable goods release is the quieter of the three but speaks most directly to business capital spending. The most recent advance report from the Census Bureau covered June and showed new orders for manufactured durable goods up 0.3% to $334.8 billion, with orders excluding transportation up 0.6% and computers and electronic products up 3.1% to $31.1 billion. The July advance report is scheduled for Wednesday morning.

Tuesday supplies the sentiment reading. The Conference Board's August consumer confidence index is due at 10 a.m. ET. In July the index stood at 90.8, down from a revised 92.2 in June, with the present situation index at 114.9 and the expectations index at 74.7. Conference Board chief economist Dana M. Peterson said: "Consumer confidence moderated slightly in July, continuing a general downward sloping trajectory since late 2021."

Then there is the single company that has become a macro event in its own right. Nvidia is scheduled to report results for the second quarter of fiscal 2027, which ended July 26, 2026, after the close on Wednesday, Aug. 26, with a conference call at 5 p.m. ET, according to the company's own announcement. The figure with the clearest provenance is Nvidia's own guidance, issued with its first-quarter results: revenue of "$91.0 billion, plus or minus 2%." Outside estimates circulate at somewhat higher levels, but they differ by compiler and the previews carrying them do not always name one, so this article does not assert a single Wall Street consensus figure. A Motley Fool preview published Aug. 24 notes that the company has topped analysts' estimates for 13 consecutive quarters and puts its market capitalization at roughly $5.2 trillion as of that date.

The reason a single earnings report reads across the whole index is arithmetic, not narrative. A separate Motley Fool analysis published Aug. 22, drawing on Vanguard S&P 500 ETF holdings data as of June 30, 2026, put Nvidia at 7.50% of the fund's assets, ahead of Apple at 6.58% and Microsoft at 4.29%. The top ten positions accounted for 36.33%. At that weight, a large move in one stock moves the index by an amount that breadth elsewhere does not fully offset — which is part of why the Nasdaq composite was trading lower Monday morning while the Dow Jones Industrial Average held higher, per Yahoo Finance's live Aug. 24 market blog. Those are intraday readings; the session is still open and Monday has not closed.

The week's last scheduled event is the one with the least advance information attached. The Jackson Hole symposium runs Aug. 27-29, and Warsh — who took office as Fed chair in May 2026 — is scheduled to deliver the keynote at roughly 10 a.m. ET Friday, according to Tech Times' Aug. 21 preview. Tech Times reported that this year's program is organized around financial innovation and its implications for payments and policy, the first time the symposium has placed digital payments and financial technology at its center, and cited a Bank of America survey in which 69% of fund managers expected a neutral tone from Warsh. Schwab's 9:05 a.m. ET note Monday framed the stakes differently: "Skeptical investors are looking for Warsh to convince them he's committed to the inflation fight."

The bond market goes into all of this off a bruising stretch but a steadier Monday morning. The Associated Press reported the 10-year Treasury yield at 4.72% in Monday trading, easing from 4.73% late Friday, and described the 30-year yield as climbing and near its highest level since 2007. No specific 30-year level is quoted here: the only figure available came from a continuously updating data page that attaches no fixed as-of time, and a yield without a timestamp is not a verifiable number.

None of Wednesday's three reports settles the argument on its own. Taken together with Tuesday's confidence reading, they describe an economy as it stood in July, before 50% tariffs on roughly $20 billion of Canadian goods took effect Aug. 22 and before this week's Iran sanctions announcement. That gap between what the data cover and what has since happened is the practical limit on how much Wednesday morning can resolve.