Good morning and welcome to the end of the traditional working week — it’s Friday, August 25 and you’re reading the ABC’s markets and business blog.

Let’s start as we usually do by looking at what happened overseas last night, where Wall Street finished lower: The Dow Jones was down 1.1%, the S&P 500 fell by 1.4%, and the Nasdaq down 1.9%.

Why? It’s mostly because of what’s happening in Jackson Hole, Wyoming right now.

As I write this, there’s a whole group of central bankers gathering for an annual symposium, which is just a fancy way of saying they’re having a big conference to discuss the economic and financial outlook for the US.

High on the agenda? Inflation — and a speech by Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell (who is pictured above alongside New York Fed president John Williams).

In his speech, Powell is going to outline how the US economy is faring and give an indicator into how the US central bank might approach its next rates meeting.

The anticipation for that speech is so high that it’s already given markets the jitters and led to investor uncertainty. To quote CommSec senior analyst Tom Piotrowski:

“The markets are a little bit twitchy to say the least ahead of that [speech].”

That’s not happening until about midnight AEST, but it looks like it’ll be enough to keep our local market on edge, with the ASX set to open lower.

Plus, earnings season is continuing to roll on for another day — we’ve already heard from Wesfarmers, which has seen a near 5% jump in profits to $2.465 billion. (More on their results shortly.)

Right, let’s get a coffee (or a tonic of your choosing) and finish the week strong, shall we?

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