Good morning. Fed speakers are on tap for today as Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee appears at Crain's Power Breakfast event, Kansas City Fed President Jeffrey Schmid addresses the Mid-Sized Bank Coalition of America and San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly is at the Western Bankers Forum. A couple Fed governors are also set to speak, with Michelle Bowman at the Financial Markets Quality Conference and Michael Barr at a Peterson Institute for International Economics event.

The Fed's interest-rate target, now set at 4% to 4.25%, gives the range where the central bank wants to see the effective fed funds rate, the rate banks pay to borrow reserves from each other overnight. The market sets the precise rate, and in recent days, it has inched higher.

The EFFR this week has been at 4.09%, or 16 basis points below the top of the Fed's target range. That is the tightest spread since the Fed began raising interest rates in 2022, and a potential sign that funding conditions are tightening as the Fed's balance sheet shrinks. Analysts at Wrightson pin the shift on deleveraging at the U.S. offices of foreign banks, which are major players in the fed funds market. (Dow Jones Newswires)

Switzerland’s central bank left its key interest rate at zero Thursday, ending a sequence of six straight cuts, despite the threat of slower growth as the economy adjusts to one of the highest tariffs set by President Trump.

Investors had mostly expected the decision after comments from officials at the central bank that signaled a reluctance to push the key rate back below zero, where it settled for almost eight years until September 2022.

The Swiss National Bank indicated that a further cut in the key rate is possible if a period of falling prices, or deflation, threatens.

Factory activity in Canada looks to have stalled, with an early estimate of sales showing a pullback in August following a recovery the previous two months.

Manufacturing sales fell an estimated 1.5% from a month prior, Statistics Canada said Wednesday.

The largest declines were seen in transportation equipment and food, the data agency said.

China urged its companies with U.S. operations not to bring their domestic price-cutting playbook to the U.S. market, signaling Beijing’s intent to maintain recent trade calm with Washington.

Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao said during a meeting in New York with Chinese company representatives that China and the U.S. “have reached consensus on a number of issues after several rounds of economic and trade consultation,” according to a statement by the ministry late Wednesday. This will help to “stabilize economic and trade relations between the two countries,” he said.

U.S. crude oil inventories fell last week along with declines in product stocks, according to data released Wednesday by the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Commercial crude oil stocks excluding the Strategic Petroleum Reserve were down by 607,000 barrels at 414.8 million barrels in the week ended Sept. 19, and were about 4% below the five-year average for the time of year, the EIA said. Crude stocks were expected to have fallen by 300,000 barrels, according to a Wall Street Journal survey of analysts.

8:30 a.m.: FRB Chicago President Austan Goolsbee speaks at Crain's Power Breakfast event
8:30 a.m.: Advance Report on Durable Goods
8:30 a.m.: Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report - Initial Claims
8:30 a.m.: 3rd estimate GDP
9 a.m.: Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City President Jeffrey Schmid speaks before the Mid-Sized Bank Coalition of America
10 a.m.: Fed's Bowman speaks at the Financial Markets Quality Conference
10 a.m.: Existing Home Sales
11 a.m.: Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City Survey of Tenth District Manufacturing
1 p.m.: PIIE discussion with Federal Reserve Governor Michael Barr
3:30 p.m.: Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco President Mary Daly speaks at Western Bankers Forum

9 a.m.: PIIE discussion with FRB Richmond President Thomas Barkin 
10 a.m.: University of Michigan Survey of Consumers - final
1 p.m.: Federal Reserve Vice Chair Michelle Bowman speech on 'Approach to Monetary Policy Decision-Making'

New Zealand’s incoming central bank governor, Anna Breman, has pledged a laserlike focus on keeping inflation low, but her immediate challenge will have to be restoring economic growth when she takes the helm in December, writes WSJ’s James Glynn. Breman may also want to reassess the RBNZ’s policy record, given the economy’s persistent weakness despite more than a year of aggressive interest-rate cuts. The task will come against the backdrop of an increasingly uncertain global outlook, rising geopolitical risks and efforts by the White House to influence Federal Reserve policy.

Many on Wall Street are skeptical about a U.S. housing revival indicated by a 20.5% increase in new-home sales in August, when forecasters expected another monthly decline. Santander's Stephen Stanley notes that most of the national rise came in the South. "Perhaps the seasonals assume a certain amount of hurricane disruption in August, but so far this year...not a single hurricane has made landfall on the Atlantic Coast," he writes. Mortgage rates weren't that much lower in August to explain the rise, Stanley adds, while prices actually increased from July. He says inventory remains too high and groundbreaking is likely to continue to slow. — Paulo Trevisani

The eurozone can expect a pickup in economic pace next year, analysts at Barclays write. Private-sector domestic demand remains subdued in the currency area for now, and growth in economic output looks likely to remain muted for the rest of this year, Barclays says. But next year, the eurozone can look forward to higher defense spending across the EU, as well as infrastructure stimulus in Germany and the gathering effects of lower interest rates, the bank says. "We expect momentum to pick up," the analysts say. — Joshua Kirby

The Monetary Authority of Singapore is likely to keep its policy settings unchanged in October, ANZ's head of Asia research Khoon Goh writes in a report. Rising uncertainty from frequent changes to proposed U.S. tariffs has eased, Goh says. Singapore's economy has also performed much better than expected in 1H, while its outlook doesn't seem as dire as before, Goh says. The city-state's recent benign inflation indicates there isn't a reason for MAS to ease its policy further. "The MAS is forward-looking, and with inflation expected to rise towards its long-term average levels in 2026, there is no need to adjust policy," Goh adds.— Amanda Lee

• German consumers are feeling a little less pessimistic as expectations rise for higher incomes, despite signs of a weaker labor market and stagnant economic growth. A consumer-climate index published Thursday by research groups GfK and the Nuremberg Institute for Market Decisions improved a little, rising to minus 22.3 in its forecast for October from minus 23.5 in September. That ends a monthslong streak of steadily worsening sentiment gauged by the index, and is a little better than economists had expected, according to a poll compiled by The Wall Street Journal.

WSJ Pro Central Banking brings you central banking news, analysis and insights from WSJ’s global team of reporters and editors. This newsletter was compiled by markets reporter Vicky Ge Huang in New York. Send your tips, suggestions and feedback to vicky.huang@wsj.com.