Last week brought the delayed September numbers on personal income, consumption, and the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) price index. It’s backward-looking,

Stocks are back on the doorstep of record territory after a volatile month on Wall Street, but persistent inflation worries and souring consumer sentiment are keeping investors uneasy ahead of the Fed’s last policy meeting of the year.

US consumer spending stalled in September, suggesting Americans were already stretched going into the government shutdown in the face of stubborn inflation.

Nearly every metric economists use to determine the strength of the economy “is somewhere between moderately concerning” and “virtually stagnant,” said economic expert Ben Harris.

Core inflation, a price measure closely watched by the Federal Reserve, came in cooler than expected in September, according to delayed federal data, a win for Republican President Donald Trump, who wants the central bank to cut interest rates more quickly and is under pressure from Democrats over affordability.