This Week in Markets: Delta, PepsiCo, Levi's Earnings and Fed Minutes Take Center Stage

NEW YORK — On paper, this is one of the quietest weeks of the year for markets: no tier-one economic data, a thin earnings calendar, a handful of household names. In practice, it is the week Wall Street reads the tea leaves for everything that comes next. Wednesday's minutes from the Federal Reserve's September meeting will be picked apart for clues about whether the central bank raises rates again in late October, and earnings from PepsiCo, Delta Air Lines, Levi Strauss and Constellation Brands will offer the first fresh reads on the American consumer in weeks.

The setup, per Dow Jones Newswires: equities ended last week mixed, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite rising 0.5% while the S&P 500 fell 0.3%. Treasury yields got a temporary reprieve late in the week from their recent relentless rise, as a better-than-feared inflation report and a weaker-than-expected jobs report had Wall Street reassessing the path of the federal-funds rate. Our Monday market coverage has the full picture — including Nvidia's record run and a 10-year yield that keeps climbing.

The backdrop is doing plenty of talking on its own. The 10-year Treasury yield has climbed to its highest level in more than two decades, reinforcing concern that tighter borrowing conditions could weigh on equities even if the Fed keeps rates unchanged in the near term. Technology shares are leading the latest advance, with Nvidia reaching an all-time intraday high and the Nasdaq setting a record — though that leadership is narrow, and elevated cash levels suggest many investors are staying liquid heading into third-quarter reporting season. Oil prices and Middle East headlines remain a separate source of volatility, with Brent having pushed above $100 before the G7 announced the release of 100 million barrels of emergency oil and fuel reserves. As Wells Fargo Investment Institute global strategist Gary Schlossberg put it, investors are likely to keep responding to shifting geopolitical and market developments alongside the data, rather than waiting for the calendar to do the work.

Today, Monday, the Institute for Supply Management releases its Services PMI for September. Consensus calls for a reading of about 55 — slightly below August's 55.4 — in a report that covers the services sector dominating the U.S. economy. The internals matter as much as the headline: new orders and the prices-paid subindex will say whether demand and inflation pressure stayed hot, while the employment component — stuck in contraction at 47.8 in August — will show whether services growth is starting to support hiring again.

Wednesday is the week's main event. At 2 p.m. ET, the Federal Open Market Committee releases the minutes from its mid-September meeting — the one where, on September 16, policymakers voted unanimously, 12-0, to raise the federal funds rate by a quarter point to a 3.75%–4.00% range. It was the Fed's first rate hike since 2023, and the updated dot plot showed the median projection for the funds rate at the end of 2026 at 4.1%, with 16 of 18 officials expecting at least one more increase this year.

What the minutes will be tested against is how fast the market has repriced since. September payrolls came in at just 29,000 new jobs — far below the 84,000 economists expected — while the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.2% against a 4.1% forecast. Traders are now pricing in only about a 20% chance that the central bank raises rates at its late-October meeting, down from roughly 65% a week earlier, per Barron's. The question the minutes must answer: is the Fed still leaning hawkish, or is it quietly opening the door to a pause? See our Nasdaq record coverage for how the bond market is voting.

On the earnings side, Tuesday brings Constellation Brands after the closing bell — the beer, wine and spirits maker — alongside Lamb Weston and RPM International. Wednesday pairs the Fed minutes with results from Levi Strauss and Applied Digital, the data-center builder riding the AI infrastructure wave. Then Thursday, PepsiCo reports before the open. The focus there: North American snack volumes, which have been the pressure point in recent quarters, and the company's full-year outlook — a read on whether the consumer is trading down, pulling back, or just fine.

Friday belongs to Delta Air Lines, the first major airline to report and the week's most-watched name. Delta has affirmed its full-year guidance of $6.50–$7.50 in earnings per share and $3–$4 billion in free cash flow — a confident posture in a year when jet-fuel costs have been anything but predictable. The quarter will test whether corporate and premium-leisure demand is still strong enough to offset fuel and whether management holds the line on that outlook into the holidays.

Friday also brings the University of Michigan's preliminary October consumer sentiment survey — the week's closing read on household inflation expectations, which in September showed consumers still worried about high fuel prices and persistent inflation. In all, just three S&P 500 companies report this week — Constellation Brands, PepsiCo and Delta — a deliberate breather before the big banks report on October 13 and unofficially open the third-quarter earnings season.

That's the real shape of this week: a light calendar doing heavy lifting. The minutes will calibrate the rate path, the services PMI will test the soft-landing story, and a few consumer bellwethers will say whether the spending that carried the economy is still there. By Friday, the market will either head into bank earnings with its questions answered — or with sharper ones.