CNBC’s “Power Lunch” Broadcasts Live from the Cboe Trading Floor in Chicago 6/25/26

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**Brian Sullivan** (1:08)
Chicago, this is the city of broad shoulders. It is also the birthplace, by the way, of listed options. And the Cboe is one of the most important exchanges in the world. Hi everybody, alongside Kelly, I am Brian Sullivan.

**Kelly Evans** (1:20)
And we're coming to you from one of the world's great financial capitals. We've been talking about it all afternoon. Chicago, and we are live here. You can see, this is the floor of the Cboe right behind us. This is the SPX pits, the VIX pits are just over that way.

**Brian Sullivan** (1:33)
Yeah, and if you are trading S&P options, there's a very good chance that order flow goes to the people sitting right behind us. All right. Hi, everybody. There is a lot going on in the markets. On this Thursday, you got oil markets. Look at that. Crude oil is up about 2.5 percent. Now, they were briefly below $70 a barrel this morning. Here's what happened. A group saying that it represents part of the Iranian military making some new threats around the Strait of Hormuz today. Some talk about ships being fired on or maybe even being hit. The oil well off its lows and overall, we know this inflation. It is still running hot. A key measure of inflation just rose 4.1 percent in May, which means we are now rising 4.1 percent annually. Folks, that's a big number. It's also the highest in three years. All of this not only means the prices you pay for things is going to go up.
It also may rise, raise the odds of a rate hike.
Joining us now at the Cboe in Chicago is Chicago Fed President, Austan Goolsbee. Austan, great to see you.

**Austan Goolsbee** (2:37)
Great to see you. Welcome to the greatest city in the world, city of big brains and broad shoulders.

**Brian Sullivan** (2:42)
Well, the big brains are yours.
Broad shoulders may be mine. I have no ideas or pads, by the way. Austan, thanks for joining us. Okay. So it's been a weird couple of weeks because the price of oil was over 100
Now it's at 70 bucks. It goes into so many things that go into inflation that you and your team watch so closely. How hard is it for you and your team to get a read on inflation right now?

**Austan Goolsbee** (3:07)
It's hard to get the through line for sure. And then not just at the Chicago Fed. Everybody sees that you talk to people trading the futures. They're trying to figure out what's the through line on inflation, how persistent, how temporary are these hikes that we've seen. The Fed, as you know, has an inflation target of 2%.
We've been above that number for five straight years.

**Brian Sullivan** (3:33)
I know you went to MIT, but four is not two. Four is not two. Do I need to tell you that?

**Austan Goolsbee** (3:37)
Four is not two. And so the question, we've had periods where we were making progress, then we kind of stalled out on the progress. Lately, it's been going the wrong way. But some of the going the wrong way is driven by what we hope to be temporary events, wars, tariffs. These are things that are supposed to be won and done, and then you would see the inflation going away.
It's been a little more disturbing on the services side because that's not real, that elevated inflation is not coming from tariffs, it's not coming from oil prices. So, I think we got to keep watching these numbers. It wasn't all negative in this inflation report. You have seen now a little bit of improvement on the services inflation, and I've been identifying that as something that we would want to see.