With just 7 Fed Days left of his tenure including today, Chair Powell’s time as head of the Fed is coming to an end.  And as shown below, the S&P 500 has gained 0.06% on average on Fed Days during Powell’s tenure dating back to February 2018, which is actually the weakest of the four chairs we’ve had since 1994 when they first began announcing policy moves on the day of their meetings.  Ben Bernanke saw the best market performance on Fed Days with an average gain of 0.50%, followed by Greenspan’s 0.26% gain and Yellen’s 0.16% move.

Interestingly, the stock market has done well early in the day on Powell Fed Days, but it’s the final hour and a half of the trading day that does him in.  The typical Powell Fed Day has seen solid market gains in morning trading through around 2:30 PM ET when the Fed’s press conference usually begins, and from there, the trend has been for the market to tank into the close.

While Powell Fed Days are now known for seeing extreme market weakness into the 4 PM ET close, overall, the market has done well during Powell’s tenure.  As shown below, since Powell became Fed Chair in early 2018, the S&P has posted an annualized total return of 14.3%, which ranks him fourth out of eight chairs dating back to 1950.

The Q2 2025 earnings season is well underway, and we sifted through earnings calls from the 92 companies that have reported since Monday’s (7/28) open, looking for some of the most interesting macro-related quotes from management teams that may serve as broader signals about the state of the economy, consumers, and markets. Below are twenty of the most revealing quotes that we pulled from this batch of calls, offering a window into what executives are seeing across industries and geographies right now.

• UPS (UPS): “[Small businesses] are finding that in today’s environment, credit conditions have tightened up a bit on them. So it’s not that they don’t have access to capital in the ways that they have seen in prior years. So there are a number of just challenges that this group is faced with.” – Carol Tomé, CEO
• Proctor & Gamble (PG): “The volatility the consumer is seeing isn’t necessarily grounded in their current reality, but more about what they expect in the future. So consumers are being more careful with their consumption. They’re using up pantry inventory and looking for value, either in smaller packs and promotions, or in larger pack sizes from club stores and online.” – Andre Schulten, CFO
• Merk (MRK): “The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices subsequently voted to recommend ENFLONSIA for use in infants younger than 8 months of age for their first RSV season and include this new option in the Vaccines for Children Program, an important step in ensuring access.” – Dean Li, President
• Enterprise Products (EPD): “This past quarter was dominated by headlines about tariffs and trade… We’ve been clear about the risk of weaponizing U.S. energy exports. These kind of actions rarely hurt the intended target and often backfire hurting our own industry more… We’re fortunate this administration understands the importance of energy and global trade even if the Commerce Department may need a little reminder.” – James Teague, Co-CEO
• CBRE Group: “There is a lot of capital out there. We have it and other people have it that wants to buy real estate, and there is a huge amount of sell-side interest on the part of owners of real estate that haven’t been able to sell it for the last few years… We expect the sales activity and the refinancing activity to both continue strong in the back half of the year. We’re not expecting interest rates to move in a way that alter that materially.” – Robert Sulentic, CEO
• Nucor (NUE): “If we think about the resiliency of [non-residential construction] on the construction market in general. That took off really post-COVID, and it has remained robust for a long period of time, and we anticipate that remaining robust… So again, the demand drivers for this segment [steel products tied to commercial, industrial, and infrastructure builds] are really robust, and we expect them to remain that way, again, throughout the rest of this year and quite frankly, beyond.” – Leon Topalian, President, CEO
• PayPal (PYPL): “Today, almost 3.5 billion people rely on digital wallets as their go-to method for shopping and transferring funds… That’s 83% of global digital payments happening through wallets… But among those billions of users, there are hundreds of regional wallets represented. This fragmented system of wallets poses tremendous challenges and immense friction in a global commerce ecosystem.” – Alex Chriss, CEO
• Hartford Financial (HIG): “Yes… I think we spoke about it equally in the past. [Litigation finance and social inflation] are still a fact of life, still a tax. It’s still a burden. It’s not fair. It’s not what our court system was intended to [support]. But I’m also equally optimistic that more and more people across the industry and businesses are getting involved and trying to take a legislative corrective action [to curb these excesses]… I think it’s getting a little bit more national attention, particularly in D.C., and I was really actually encouraged by former Attorney General Barr’s comments on the need just to put some limits on these injury claims, including noneconomic limits.” – Christopher Swift, CEO
• Waste Management (WM): “I think you actually are seeing a little bit of strength in the economy that we haven’t had. We’ve talked about kind of an industrial recession over the last probably 5 or 6 quarters. And I think that’s largely kind of dissipated and we’re seeing it in roll-off and in [construction and demolition].” – James Fish, CEO
• Carrier Global (CARR): “We have not seen a big switch from repair over replace. We are watching the consumer. Movement was slower in 2Q than we had expected. Movement was a bit light in July, but it started to pick up towards the end of July, a bit more because of some of the heat in the country… Interest rates have continued to be high, which has put a damper on residential new construction and also people moving to buy new homes.” – David Gitlin, CEO
• Johnson Controls (JCI): “China is maybe a longer discussion, but I was there recently and maybe the one tidbit is that, that market is gradually turning into a more mature market in the sense of that the retrofit part of the market continues to steadily increase, which is different than a number of years ago when it was sort of a new construction new build market. So it’s starting to look a little bit more like some of our Western markets.” – Joakim Weidemanis, CEO
• Asbury Automotive (ABG): “The average age of a passenger car on the road is 14.5 years old, and the average truck is nearly 12 years old… recent and upcoming models have more technology and innovative powertrains, which should create opportunity for our service departments for years to come.” – Daniel Clara, COO
• Koninklijke Philips (PHG): “We continue to see strong demand in North America, with patient volumes remaining high and procedures still on the rise. Health systems are increasingly focused on productivity… finding ways to serve more patients at lower cost. At the same time, there’s growing interest in ambulatory solutions to extend care beyond hospital walls. Most importantly, we see this demand trend holding steady into next year. – Roy Jakobs, CEO
• Universal Health (UHS): “We continue in certain markets to be hampered by our inability to hire all the staff that we need. It’s still a tight labor market. And again, while it is not the pervasive issue that it was at the height of the pandemic, staffing scarcity continues to be an issue in some markets.” – Steve Filton, CFO
• UnitedHealth (UNH): “The American health system’s long-standing cost problem is accelerating. We are embracing our responsibility to continue to drive better health outcomes while trying to keep healthcare affordable for all Americans.” – Tim Noel, CEO
• Sysco (SYY): “Traffic to restaurants [was] down approximately 1% in the quarter, certainly better than Q3. We believe Q3 was a bit of an anomaly… external news was quite negative, consumer confidence dropped, the conversations about tariffs and the impact on consumer confidence [lowered traffic to restaurants] … We’re expecting the current conditions to continue for 2026.” – Kevin Hourican, CEO
• Lithia Motors (LAD): “I believe that manufacturers have already begun to either decontent cars or not charge for other upgrades… Consumers can save other dollars… So a finite 15% increase when we think about the tariff… is just another thing in our daily lives… As the world moves on and as [tariffs] start to change the industry, those with more cash and more ability to code solutions for customers [to] make it easier are those that are going to be able to grow market share and be less impacted by whatever changes do come from tariffs, franchise laws, or whatever else.” – Bryan DeBoer, CEO
• Royal Caribbean (RCL): “We see a very healthy customer. When we dig into that customer, they have great jobs, they have strong balance sheets, and they’re confident in spending and making sure that they’re receiving the vacation experience that they’re looking for. So again, I think all turns are green on the customer at this point in time, and they’re traveling all over the world. We’re seeing that not just in North American, but we’re also seeing that in European travel activity.” – Jason Liberty, CEO
• Boeing (BA): “[Supply chain] constraints tomorrow get resolved and then there’s new constraints, and you just constantly are working each one of those down… We’re in a perpetual rate increase kind of environment.” – Robert Kelly Ortberg, CEO

Please click here or on the link below to read our latest quarterly Wealth Management Report.  You can learn more about Bespoke’s wealth management services available to investors here or by calling our office at 914-315-1248.

Below are links to prior quarterly Wealth Management Reports:

Bespoke WMR Q1 2025

Bespoke WMR Q4 2024