The three indices closed Wednesday along two different paths. The $Dow Jones(.DJI)$ fell 1.21 per cent to 51,461.90, losing 631.21 points on the day; the $S&P 500(.SPX)$ closed 0.45 per cent lower at 7,551.81, a third consecutive fall; and the $NASDAQ(.IXIC)$ Composite barely moved, closing 0.01 per cent lower at 25,978.42. The Federal Reserve raised rates by 25 basis points that afternoon. All three had been higher before it did, and the turn began with the decision and the press conference. The target range for the federal funds rate went up to 3.75-4 per cent, from 3.5 per cent to 3.75 per cent before, with

The indices closed lower for a second day on Tuesday, $S&P 500(.SPX)$ down 0.45 per cent at 7,585.73, the $NASDAQ(.IXIC)$ Composite down 0.78 per cent at 25,981.57 and the $Dow Jones(.DJI)$ down 0.63 per cent at 52,093.11. The reason for the fall, though, was not the same one as Monday's. On Monday the market was pricing what four executives had said, which is something that has not happened yet; on Tuesday two things had already produced a result — a Senate motion failed, and the 10-year Treasury yield reached a level it had not touched in nineteen years. The heaviest fall of the day was not in chips but in

The indices barely moved on Monday. $S&P 500(.SPX)$ closed 0.48 per cent lower, $Dow Jones(.DJI)$ 0.29 per cent lower and $NASDAQ(.IXIC)$ Composite 0.56 per cent lower. A layer below, the difference was large: $Philadelphia Semiconductor Index(SOX)$ closed 5.53 per cent lower, its biggest one-day fall since 1 July, while CrowdStrike closed 13.85 per cent higher at a record. Two sectors were priced in opposite directions on the same day. On Saturday 12 September, Dario Amodei, the chief executive of Anthropic, published "We Must Pace the Frontier", arguin

On Friday the August CPI report landed, traders took the odds of a 25 basis point hike this week from 75 per cent to close to nine in ten, and $S&P 500(.SPX)$ closed 0.86 per cent higher all the same, ending a four-session slide; $Dow Jones(.DJI)$ closed 0.98 per cent higher, a gain of more than 500 points. The bet on higher rates got bigger. The buyers came back. August CPI rose 3.4 per cent year on year, level with July and in line with expectations; month on month it rose 0.4 per cent against 0.1 per cent in July. The gasoline index rose 3.9 per cent on the month and accounted for a third of the entire rise in goods prices. Core CPI eased to 2.4 per cent year on year

On Thursday $Oracle(ORCL)$ closed 5.38 per cent lower at US$152.94, and only then reported. Its remaining performance obligations stand at US$664 billion, up from US$638 billion at the end of the previous quarter, a record. $S&P 500(.SPX)$ closed 0.58 per cent lower the same day, its fourth session in a row heading down and the longest such run since June. The order book set a record. The fall came before it. That US$664 billion is work signed, not money collected. To get the work done, Oracle's capital expenditure ran to about US$28.5 billion in the quarter against US$8.5 billion a year earlier; free cash flow came in at minus US$5.4 billion; and in the same fiscal qua

On Wednesday $S&P 500(.SPX)$ closed 0.48 per cent lower, its third session in a row heading down. $Meta Platforms, Inc.(META)$ rose 6.55 per cent the same day to close at US$653.69. The whole market was backing away while one of the largest companies in it put on six and a half points, and those look like two unrelated things. They are one thing. What is holding the indexes down is rates: Brent crude moved back above US$100 for the first time in two months, the inflation print lands on Friday, the ten-year Treasury yield was pushed to 4.85 per cent and the thirty-year broke above 5.30 per cent. The Treasury stepped in that day and raised the cap on its buybacks of ten-

All three indexes closed lower on Tuesday, the Dow worst of them at 1.18 per cent, $S&P 500(.SPX)$ down 0.58 per cent and $NASDAQ(.IXIC)$ Composite down 0.32 per cent. Chips went the other way on the same day: Intel put on 9.05 per cent to close at US$104.47, back above US$100 and the biggest gain in the row. The indexes went one way and the chips went the other, and that is the split this day comes down to. What pushed the indexes down was oil. WTI moved above US$94 and Brent came close to US$99, and what pushed oil up were attacks in the Middle East. The attacks fell over the weekend, so they were not in Friday's closing prices and only arrived at Tuesday's open. The

All three indexes closed lower on Friday, $S&P 500(.SPX)$ down 0.38 per cent at 7,718.60, $Dow Jones(.DJI)$ down 0.51 per cent and $NASDAQ(.IXIC)$ Composite down 0.29 per cent. On the same day $Micron Technology(MU)$ closed 6.10 per cent higher at US$1,016.59, $SanDisk Corp.(SNDK)$ 11.90 per cent higher at US$1,740.00, $SK hynix(SKHY)$ 8.14 per cent higher at US$177.00, and $Direxion D

$S&P 500(.SPX)$ closed 1.06 per cent higher at 7,747.71 and $Dow Jones(.DJI)$ added more than 600 points, the best day for both in a month, and the reason was a sentence from Christopher Waller, a Federal Reserve governor. He said on Thursday that he is willing to support holding rates steady in September as long as inflation keeps moving towards 2 per cent. Bets on a September hike fell from above 60 per cent to a little over half, and the ten-year Treasury yield came back to around 4.75 per cent, a day after touching its highest in more than two years. Waller's reason for holding was to give disinflation a chance: "We can wait one meeting." In the same remarks he left

One batch of results, three different share prices. $Dell Technologies Inc.(DELL)$ closed 15.81 per cent higher on Wednesday at US$492.20. Credo's revenue more than doubled from the previous quarter and the stock closed down 20.04 per cent at US$165.22. $Broadcom(AVGO)$ left its answer until after the close, beat on both revenue and earnings, and saw its shares push above US$370 before being knocked back below US$350. The hardest number in Dell's results is US$95 billion — a record order backlog for AI servers. It raised full-year revenue guidance by US$25 billion to US$192 billion at the same time. At least 15 firms moved their targets that day: UBS from US$455 to US$500,

$Dow Jones(.DJI)$ fell 419 points on Tuesday, or 0.79 per cent, to 52,766.88; $S&P 500(.SPX)$ lost 0.71 per cent to 7,631.47; $Invesco QQQ(QQQ)$ fell 1.27 per cent. The selling started in the Middle East: US forces struck Iranian targets near the Strait of Hormuz, and Brent crude jumped about 5 per cent on the day to around US$95, a level reports call its highest since late July. When oil goes up, the inflation maths has to be redone. The ten-year Treasury yield closed at 4.78 per cent, which reports put as the highest since January 2025; the thirty-year reached 5.27 per cent. Futures at the CME now put the odds

Jensen Huang said on Monday that he is not afraid of custom chips. The same day, Nvidia put US$3.5 billion into MediaTek convertible bonds and brought MediaTek onto its own NVLink. He is not trying to keep custom chips outside the door; he wants them running across Nvidia's network. Reports say the tie-up is meant to get custom data-centre chips deployed faster. Nvidia closed 1.48 per cent higher at US$220.78. On the custom-silicon side, the tape read the opposite way. $Marvell Technology(MRVL)$ fell another 2.29 per cent to US$211.66, and its gain for the year slipped from 154.91 per cent on Friday to 149.07 per cent. The wound is the same one as last week. Revenue from the US$120 billion arrangement with

Hello. After Warsh spoke on Friday, one estimate put the odds of a September rate rise at 60 per cent. Over the weekend US forces struck Iran and Brent crude went above US$90. Dearer oil makes inflation harder to hold down. But this particular fire is burning on the supply side, where a rate rise will not put it out and will press on demand as well. In three days, September became a harder question. This was Warsh's first appearance at Jackson Hole as chair. He restated the commitment to holding inflation down, and coverage rated the speech "moderately hawkish". He made clear he was not offering forward guidance; a former Fed vice chair said he had given it anyway. The market took him at his word: the two-year Treasury yield jumped, spot gold fell from US$4,649.60 last Thursday to US$4,478

Hello. $NVIDIA(NVDA)$ closed up 8.74 per cent on Thursday at US$227.98, and one report called it the largest single-day gain in market value the company has ever made; $Invesco QQQ(QQQ)$ rose 1.37 per cent. Another headline was blunter: $S&P 500(.SPX)$ was up that day because of Nvidia and nothing else. The other side of it appeared the same day: one report's headline said Nvidia is getting too big, and that this is a problem in itself. An index leaning on a single stock looks good on the way up and works the same way in reverse. The day before, it had fallen first and turned higher only on the 70 per cent growth

Hello. US markets barely moved during Wednesday's session — $S&P 500(.SPX)$ fell 0.02 per cent and $Invesco QQQ(QQQ)$ rose 0.09 per cent, with everyone waiting on one set of results after the close. They arrived, and the numbers were better than anyone had expected. Record revenue of US$96.221 billion, up 106 per cent year on year, with data centre revenue up 117 per cent; consensus was about US$92.38 billion, so revenue came in about 4 per cent ahead, and adjusted earnings per share was US$2.22 against US$2.09 expected, about 6.22 per cent ahead. Guidance for the current quarter is about US$108 billion, and revenue in financial year 2028 is expected to grow about 70 per

Hello. Nvidia does not report until after tonight's US close. Not one of Tuesday's five biggest gainers rose because of it. $NVIDIA(NVDA)$ itself closed up 2.19 per cent at US$213.05, snapping a seven-session losing streak, and added 0.29 per cent after hours. The indices rose with it: $S&P 500(.SPX)$ up 0.32 per cent and $Invesco QQQ(QQQ)$ 0.62 per cent, with coverage noting $Dow Jones(.DJI)$ had posted a third straight triple-digit gain. On the results themselves, the options market is pricing a swing of about US$280 billion in market value, with anothe

Hello. On Monday the chip chain was sold from end to end. $Micron Technology(MU)$ closed down 5.83 per cent at US$910.43, $SanDisk Corp.(SNDK)$ fell 6.45 per cent, $SK hynix(SKHY)$ 4.92 per cent, $Advanced Micro Devices(AMD)$ 3.49 per cent, $Marvell Technology(MRVL)$ 3.27 per cent and $Intel(INTC)$ 3.12 per cent, while the optical name $Applied Optoelectronics(AAOI)$ dropped 13.77 per ce

Hello. Last friday's US session was a quiet one — $Invesco QQQ(QQQ)$ closed up 0.35 per cent, $SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust(SPY)$ 0.41 per cent and the Dow 0.98 per cent — though the week as a whole still finished lower. What mattered happened after the close. On 23 August $BABA-W(09988)$ announced and priced a placement of new shares worth HK$80 billion, about US$10.2 billion, sold at an 8.4 per cent discount, with the net proceeds going into full-stack AI infrastructure. That is the fourth such raise in the same week. Intel sold US$20 billion of stock at US$95 a share;

Hello. The Treasury's buyback tool was upsized again, and the bond market bought it for half a day. US Treasury Secretary Bessent said on Thursday that the size of each long-dated Treasury buyback had gone from US$2 billion to at least US$4 billion, and could rise further. The 30-year yield fell as much as 10 basis points and the dollar index weakened — and then the bond market pushed back. The reason is simple enough: buybacks deal with liquidity, while the deficit, inflation and the term premium have not moved at all. There was a new variable that day: the consumer. $S&P 500(.SPX)$ closed down 0.87 per cent and $Dow Jones(.DJI)$ 1.32 per cent, about 600 points — Barro

Hello. The long end, which had been pressing on everything for three days, got held down on Wednesday. The 30-year Treasury yield first set a 19-year high intraday, then turned back after the US Treasury said it would at least double the size of its liquidity support buybacks in 10- to 30-year securities. The 30-year fell as much as 9 basis points to 5.19 per cent, closed near 5.20 per cent, and is down to 5.18 per cent today. But technology did not come back. $SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust(SPY)$ closed up 0.21 per cent and $Dow Jones(.DJI)$ 0.22 per cent, and most of that came from healthcare while tech kept being sold. One headline put it plainly: the tech sell-off resumed an