“Soros is the best loss taker I’ve ever seen. He doesn’t care whether he wins or loses on a trade. If a trade doesn’t work, he’s confident enough about his ability to win on other trades that he can easily walk away from the position.” — Druckenmiller

1. Fed’s Powell Says Interest-Rate Pause Is Expected to Be Temporary — Fed officials left rates unchanged last week after lifting them at 10 straight policy meetings to combat inflation. But investors, consumers and borrowers shouldn’t think they were done, Powell told the House Financial Services Committee on Wednesday. Inflation and economic activity haven’t slowed as much as many officials anticipated this year, casting more uncertainty over how high they might lift rates this year.
Fed officials see a risk that their past rate increases, together with recent banking-industry stresses, will eventually create a sharper-than-anticipated slowdown. They are trying to balance that against the risk that the economy proves more resilient than expected and inflation stays too high, requiring them to increase rates higher than otherwise.
2. Submersible Passengers Died in Implosion — the five men onboard the missing submersible in the North Atlantic died in a catastrophic implosion, the U.S. Coast Guard said, after searchers found debris from the craft near the Titanic shipwreck that ended a desperate search to find them alive. The submersible, known as the Titan, had left Sunday morning for what was supposed to be an hours long excursion to the Titanic site more than 2 miles underwater, but it lost contact with the outside world. The disappearance set off an urgent international search effort to find them alive. The Coast Guard said earlier Thursday that crews had identified debris near the Titanic shipwreck about 900 miles off Cape Cod.
3. Bank of England Outpaces Peers With Rate Rise of Half Percentage Point — The Bank of England raised its key interest rate by half a percentage point Thursday, a more aggressive rate rise than its peers as it seeks to curb the highest inflation rate in the Group of Seven wealthy countries.
The move to raise the lending rate to 5%, its highest level since April 2008, revived fears that the central bank may have to push the U.K. economy into a recession later this year in an effort to contain price increases. Across rich economies, inflation has proved tougher to tame than central banks had expected only months ago, dashing hopes that borrowing costs might stop rising soon. Norway’s central bank also increased its core lending rate by half a percentage point Thursday, while Switzerland hiked its benchmark rate by a quarter point. Both warned of further increases in the coming months.
4. Higher Interest Rates Hit Home Prices Again — U.S. existing-home prices posted their biggest year-over-year decline in more than 11 years last month as rising interest rates continued to weigh on the housing market. The national median existing-home price fell 3.1% in May from a year earlier to $396,100, the largest drop since December 2011, the National Association of Realtors reported.
Existing-home sales, which make up most of the housing market, increased 0.2% in May from the prior month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.3 million, the National Association of Realtors reported. May sales fell 20.4% from a year earlier.

The week ahead — Economic data from Econoday.com: