Analysts and investors view this speech as an early test of whether Waller is willing to adapt to growing external concerns about his policy plans. The Federal Reserve has now failed to hit its inflation target for 65 consecutive months, with only very limited progress over the past year and a half. Waller, in the early days of his tenure, has repeatedly reaffirmed the Fed’s commitment to meeting its inflation target, but has never specified how he plans to achieve this—this has sparked market calls for the Fed to adjust its policy priorities. Gregory Daco, chief economist at EY-Parthenon, noted that Waller’s previous statements have been very general. “There are concerns about the Fed’s independence,” he said, adding that there are worries Waller may be reluctant to discuss potential interest rate hikes out of fear of angering Trump and his administration. Daco added: “He must be more cautious in his communications, to avoid giving the impression that the Fed may be coordinating or cooperating more closely with the Treasury, or that he is influenced by the president’s calls for interest rate cuts. These are not positive signs for any new Fed chair.” Waller must walk a tightrope. Speaking too much could trigger expectations that are hard to reverse, or at least cause discomfort; speaking too little could erode his credibility and cede influence to other Fed officials who can present more detailed arguments. Either scenario could lead to market volatility.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Chevron and other U.S. companies are nearing an agreement to invest billions of dollars in Venezuelan oil fields.

Dongcha’s Beating AI News reports that Apodex, a new AI project under Chen Tianqiao, has released FrontierChallenge, a scientific agent benchmark that tests whether AI can complete tasks end-to-end using 97 real-world scientific workflows. Twelve leading models participated in the test, with the best performance reaching only 20.6%. GPT-5.6 Sol + Codex and Grok 4.6 + Claude Code tied for first place, each fully completing 20 tasks. The test also found that agents often claim to have finished tasks even when they are incomplete. Among 10 model groups using Claude Code as the agent framework, 75.5% of 849 failed tasks were falsely reported as completed. On the other hand, all participating systems scored an average of 94.9 on electrochemistry and environmental science tasks, but none fully passed any task. This benchmark explicitly separates "mostly correct" results from "truly completed deliverables". The ranking compares models plus agent runtime frameworks, not bare models alone. The official also reminded that each system is allowed only one run per task, so small score gaps should not be directly interpreted as a stable model ranking.

According to BIT (bit.com) market data, US stocks opened with mixed performance across the three major indices: the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.21%, the S&P 500 gained 0.05%, and the Nasdaq fell 0.09%. BioNTech (BNTX.O) dropped around 8.7% after announcing the termination of its Phase 2 clinical trial for colorectal cancer.

Per market data from BIT (bit.com), Marvell Technology (MRVL.O) fell 8%. Beating earnings expectations wasn’t enough for Wall Street, which is frustrated that the large Google order is being booked too slowly.

U.S. stock index futures showed no clear direction in Friday's early trading session. Investors are awaiting highly anticipated remarks from Federal Reserve Chair Walsh, while tech stock investors are taking profits after Nvidia (NVDA.O) led the sector higher the previous day. Societe Generale analyst Rajapa said: "The core PCE data released this week sends a very clear message that inflation is actually more resilient than we expected." "If we look at this year's data as a whole, we must consider taking some policy action as soon as possible." Historically, speeches by Federal Reserve Chairs at the Jackson Hole Symposium have not been major catalysts for sharp stock market swings. Since 2000, without accompanying larger monetary policy shifts, the S&P 500 has posted an average weekly change of just 0.4% in the week following the Jackson Hole meeting. Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo Management, expects Walsh will not provide forward-looking policy guidance on Friday, but long-term yields may move. He wrote in a report: "Whatever he says about the policy framework and the economy—especially his views on inflation, unemployment and the neutral rate—could drive changes in long-dated yields."