25.05.14 WSJ

1. Macroeconomics

Title: Powell Speech, More Inflation Data: What to Watch for the Rest of This Week
Source: The Wall Street Journal (live markets blog)
Date: May 14 2025
Key Takeaways

• Traders are bracing for April producer-price (PPI) and retail-sales prints—both out this morning—which will show whether tariff shocks are feeding through to core inflation and consumer demand. 
• Fed Chair Jerome Powell is slated to speak later in the week; desks expect guidance on how recent CPI relief and tariff rollbacks shape the June FOMC debate. 
• Early futures action shows the Treasury curve steepening as investors weigh upside inflation risk against slowing goods demand. 
• Equity strategists say a soft PPI/retail combo could revive hopes for one 2H-25 rate cut; a hot read would reinforce “higher for longer.” 
  Link: https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-today-tariffs-trade-war-05-14-2025/card/powell-speech-more-inflation-data-what-to-watch-for-the-rest-of-this-week-vFh6JT3E3PhiNt61YlGA

---

2. M&A / Private Equity

Title: Databricks to Buy Startup Neon for $1 Billion
Source: The Wall Street Journal
Date: May 14 2025
Key Takeaways

• Data-analytics major Databricks will acquire Neon, a serverless Postgres database specialist, in a $1 billion cash-and-stock deal.
• Neon’s tech lets AI agents create and query databases on-the-fly—plugging a critical gap in Databricks’ push to dominate enterprise generative-AI tooling. 
• The purchase follows Databricks’ $1.3 bn MosaicML (2023) and $1.0 bn Tabular (2024) acquisitions, leveraging its recent $10 bn fund-raise (valuation ≈ $62 bn). 
• Deal expected to close by July 31 2025; Neon’s 140 employees will join Databricks while the brand runs semi-independently during integration. 
  Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/databricks-to-buy-startup-neon-for-1-billion-fdded971