1September's inflation print put an October rate hike back in play
Consumer prices rose 0.6% in September, and 3.7% on the year. FRED's index moved to 336.3 from 334.1 in August, and from 324.2 a year earlier. Reuters headlined it plainly: a Fed rate hike this month is "back on table". Kalshi had leaned the wrong way on the annual rate a day earlier. Its above-3.6% contract had fallen to 48¢, and it settled yes. The monthly above-0.6% contract, at 18¢, settled no — the print landed exactly on 0.6%.
The Fed markets moved at once. Kalshi's October hike rose to 28¢ from 18¢, on about 581,000 contracts traded in a day and open interest near 1.3 million. Hold fell to 72¢ from 82¢. A December hike rose to 79¢ from 75¢. Fed Governor Christopher Waller said higher Treasury yields are "doing a little bit of the work" of tighter policy, Stocktwits reported. That is the case for waiting.
Stocks took the print badly. The S&P 500 ETF fell 1.1% on Wednesday, the Nasdaq 100 ETF 2.0%, and the small-cap 1.9%, Alpaca data show. Bonds held up better than the story suggests. The long-Treasury ETF closed up 0.7%. Overnight the 10-year sat at 5.19%, down three basis points, Yahoo showed, and the dollar eased off an 18-month high, per Reuters.
So what: a hot month inside a hot year removes the cover the Fed had for holding. Waller's argument is the one standing between 28¢ and a hike. The October meeting is on 27–28 October, and nothing on this week's calendar settles it.
2The rate shock hit the AI names that borrowed the most, not the ones that earn the most
CoreWeave fell 15.5% on Wednesday. Its unsecured bonds are yielding close to 15%, per 24/7 Wall St. and SiliconANGLE. Nebius lost 10.1% and Oracle 8.9%, Alpaca data show. Reuters described data-centre debt worries hitting AI trades, with credit markets wobbling.
Gil Luria, head of technology research at DA Davidson, on Prof G Markets, gave the bear case on CoreWeave in one line. It borrows at about 9% to build an asset returning around 1%, guided to 4–5%. "That's destruction of value," he said. If the AI cycle sputters, he expects the equity to be worth zero. He put C3.ai and Cerebras in the same bucket, calling them "the fakers". Prof G Markets recorded the interview the day before the CoreWeave slide.
His buy list is the other half of the same argument. He likes Micron , Nvidia , SK Hynix and, "to some extent", Broadcom . His reason is that the market prices those four as if the cycle has already ended, while pricing the rest of the chip sector as if it runs to 2030. The host put SK Hynix at 3.5 times forward earnings, Micron at 5, and AMD at 51. In software Luria named Palantir , Snowflake , Datadog , Shopify and CrowdStrike . Every one of them fell on Wednesday, from 2.2% for Shopify to 6.4% for Snowflake. lost 4.1% and 3.1%.
The memory names had already been falling. Michael Batnick, on The Compound's Animal Spirits, said the memory ETF is down 32% from its peak, and that Western Digital has been cut in half. On Wednesday fell another 5.1%, 4.3% and Sandisk 5.3%. Equity Mates' Bryce and Ren called it an earnings bubble, not a speculative one. Samsung guided to third-quarter operating profit up 782% on the year, they noted, and profit growth of that size cannot repeat, in their view. Australia's biggest planned data-centre float, Firmus, was pulled after banks cut the indicated price from A$11 a share to as low as A$6, the hosts said, citing the AFR.
So what: the market is separating AI borrowers from AI earners, and higher rates make that split sharper. Luria's case is that the earners are cheap. The risk is the one he named himself — if the borrowers fail, their orders go with them. TSMC reports today and is the first hard read on demand since the slide.
3Under record index highs, most stocks are in a slow-motion correction
Equity Mates counted 85% of S&P 500 members at least 10% below their all-time highs, with the index up 14% this year. A fifth are down 50% or more, they said. On their count, 180 members sit below their 200-week moving average, up from 127 in mid-August. Netflix , McDonald's , Starbucks and Nike were on the list. The hosts stressed these were names to research, not buys, and disagreed with each other on Nike.
Batnick framed the concentration differently. In 2018 the five largest stocks equalled the bottom 282 in the index; today they equal the bottom 434. Their trailing net income matches the same 434 almost exactly, he said, so profits explain the weights. Ben Carlson, on the same show, pushed back on the gloom. Small caps are up about 15% this year, he said, ahead of the S&P, and the equal-weight index is up nearly 13%.
Carlson's bigger claim was about rates. He argued the current level of rates is worse for the economy than zero rates ever were. Existing home sales, adjusted for population, have sat at the 2009 floor for three years, he said. Real construction spending on data centres is up 65% on the year while almost every other category is down, citing Jason Furman. Manufacturing construction is down 24%.
So what: the two shows describe the same market and disagree on whether it is fragile. Equity Mates sees an invisible crash under the index. Carlson sees broadening under a profit-backed top. Wednesday's 1.9% drop in small caps after a hot print is the first test of his version.
4Ships are sinking near Hormuz, yet the odds of $100 oil fell
The Gulf got worse on the ground. Two Singapore-registered vessels were struck near the Strait of Hormuz and one sank, Reuters reported. Saudi Aramco's headquarters suffered extensive damage in the Houthi attack, sources told Reuters, and the Houthis vowed more strikes on Saudi airports and oil sites. CNN reported the US military is weighing the largest non-nuclear bomb for possible future strikes on Iran.
The crude market went the other way. Polymarket's contract on WTI touching $100 in October fell to 37% from 49.5% a day earlier, on $25,500 of volume and about $915,000 of liquidity. Its contract on WTI dipping to $90 this month resolved yes. November WTI traded at $94.08 overnight, down 1.1%, Yahoo showed. Two supply levers explain part of it. The US is considering easing sanctions on shadow-fleet tankers to cut freight rates, an official told Reuters. Oilprice.com reported inventory draws at the same time. The energy ETF rose 0.7% on Wednesday.
So what: the market is pricing damage to Saudi buildings, not lost Saudi barrels. Traffic through Hormuz returning to normal by 31 December sits at 12.5% on Polymarket, on $799,000 of liquidity. Physical escalation is not the variable to watch. A confirmed cut to Saudi output would be.
5SpaceX's $8 billion spectrum buy turned the wireless carriers into the disrupted
Ross Givens, on his channel, walked through the deal that repriced US wireless. T-Mobile sold a block of 800 MHz licences to Grain Management this summer for $2.9 billion. Grain sold the whole portfolio to SpaceX on 8 October for about $8 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported. Low-band spectrum reaches indoors, which is the weak point of phone service from space. T-Mobile fell 13% on 9 October, its worst day since 2013, Givens said. Verizon had its worst day since 2002, and AT&T since 2000.
Givens thinks the threat is real, not a one-day panic. The FCC has cleared up to 15,000 new direct-to-phone satellites, against about 650 today, he said. He cited a TD Cowen survey in which 34% of respondents would consider a SpaceX mobile service. He also called SpaceX overpriced, at roughly twice what he thinks it is worth, and said he still hopes to buy it cheaper. He sells a paid membership in the same video. A JPMorgan analyst he quoted sees limited near-term risk, because building a network takes years.
The carriers bounced on Wednesday. T-Mobile rose 2.7%, Verizon 2.0% and AT&T 0.9%, while SpaceX fell 2.8%. Givens put T-Mobile at 13.6 times next year's earnings, against 19 for the S&P.
So what: the carriers trade on subscriber counts, and SpaceX's service starts in late 2027 at the earliest. Givens named three dates that test the threat before then: T-Mobile's earnings on 28 October, an FCC filing deadline on 5 November and satellite applications due on 4 December.
What the sources recommended
Twelve single-name calls came out of one interview. Gil Luria, on Prof G Markets, listed nine names he likes and three he does not, in answer to a direct request at the end of the segment, and he presented them as views on the sector rather than sized calls. On the chip side he likes , and , with qualified as "to some extent". In software he named , , , and . He would avoid , and . His case on CoreWeave is specific: borrowing at 9% to earn 1%. His case on the other two is a label, not an analysis.
The other three videos named many stocks and recommended none of them. Ross Givens discussed SpaceX and the carriers without a call, and called SpaceX overpriced. Equity Mates listed stocks below their 200-week averages and said outright that they were not buying them.
TSMC and the regional banks report into a market that just repriced the Fed
TSMC reports this morning, and it carries the weight Wednesday put on it. Bloomberg called the bar high. A strong report helps Luria's argument that the chip earners are cheap. A soft one hands the next leg to the borrowers' critics. US Bancorp, Schwab, PNC, BNY, Prologis and Marsh report before the open, per the Finnhub calendar. Alcoa, J.B. Hunt and Interactive Brokers report after the close. Friday brings Travelers, M&T, Regions, Truist and Citizens, and monthly options expiry.
On inflation, Kalshi already prices October consumer prices rising more than 0.2% on the month at 49¢. That contract, and the 28¢ October hike, move together until the Fed meets on 27–28 October.
