Last week’s major economic updates offered new details but no consequential surprises, leaving big questions hanging over the economy’s trajectory heading into the final month of the year.

The Fed’s preferred 12-month measure of core inflation stuck stubbornly at 2.8% in its October reading, marking six months of no further progress back toward the central bank’s 2% target. The Commerce Department’s updated estimate of third-quarter GDP confirmed a 2.8% annualized growth rate. November’s jobs report is due Friday.

Expectations of easing inflation pressures and of a continually cooling labor market have suggested to some economists the economy is still slackening. The minutes of the Fed’s November meeting, released Wednesday, showed that, while the central bank’s voters are open minded about the pace of rate cuts, they still believed their stance was exerting a drag on the economy last month, with more reductions ahead before monetary policy comes into balance.

Last week’s data “probably do not change things significantly,” said Stephen Stanley, chief U.S. economist at Santander US Capital Markets. “The November FOMC minutes suggested to me that the Fed is on track to cut again in December unless the data surprise to the upside.”

Traders mostly think there will be at least one more rate cut, either at the December or January meeting, before the Fed taps the brakes. Bets in the fed-funds futures market show traders see only a 30% probability that rates still stay steady through January.

Economist Samuel Tombs of Pantheon Macro wrote that forward-looking indicators “suggest that underlying services inflation will decline over the coming months.” He forecasts that November’s inflation data—due the week before the Fed meeting—will be soft enough to give Fed officials confidence to cut again this month.

Meanwhile, wide-open questions about the incoming Trump administration’s early priorities threaten to overtake the Fed’s rate-cut path as the prime source of policy uncertainty heading into next year.

Just last week, a characteristic trio of Donald Trump policy jukes: the appointment of Scott Bessent as Treasury secretary, a threat of 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico and then a quick rapprochement with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, sent markets pinging between comfort and unease. On Monday, some emerging market currencies weakened after Trump threatened over social media to slap 100% tariffs on Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa-the BRICS countries—if they carry out plans to create a common currency to compete with the dollar.

Looking ahead, the actual shape of the administration’s tariff policy, the scale of the deportations it has threatened and the seriousness of its plans to cut spending and taxes are each looming unknowns.

Trump’s “proposed policies may lead to higher inflation in the near-term and lower growth in the medium to long-term,” Satyam Panday, an economist at S&P Global Ratings, wrote in outlining the firm’s 2025 outlook. But he added there is “high uncertainty” of how many of the president-elect’s campaign promises will materialize.

In markets, investors are likewise facing a key tension between a relatively benign economic picture and stock and bond valuations that leave a high bar to clear. At roughly 22 times forward earnings, the S&P 500 index isn’t cheap, in Morgan Stanley’s assessment, but the investment bank figures that double-digit profit growth will help lift the broad basket of stocks to about 6500 by the end of next year, from 6032.38 to end November, in an outlook close to Wall Street’s general view.

Bonds face a similar rift: Prices may get at least a small boost from the handful of Fed rate cuts the market has still penciled in for the months ahead, but with corporate-bond spreads near multi-decade lows, any sign of a downturn could prompt investors to demand a greater premium over the yield offered by ultrasafe Treasurys.

“The upcoming Fed rate cuts will not coincide with rising recession risks,” said Jeffrey Roach, chief economist at LPL Financial, an investment-advisory firm. He suggested investors should be “overweight toward high quality bonds as they tend to do well in the soft landing scenario.”