Wall Street this week felt like a “theatre of the doves” where every cue was perfectly timed: the rolled out the red carpet, and turned it into a full-blown runway show for Powell to stride toward . came in tame—not slain, but tamed enough that nobody in the audience feared the beast would break its chains.
And then, almost on cue, jobless claims spiked to their highest in four years, a reminder that the real story is less about prices and more about a labour market starting to fray. The curtain lifted, the music swelled, and traders rushed to bid stocks to fresh records, while Treasury yields briefly dipped below 4% as if bowing to the inevitable.
What was once a balancing act between inflation and job creation has tipped into one-way production. The hawks have retreated into the rafters, the doves have taken center stage, and the mandate looks rewritten. After the payroll…