A 77% Hike Bet Meets a CPI With No Annual Number

U.S. futures are higher after a week in which the S&P 500 fell 2.7% and the Nasdaq 3.4%. Small caps lead. The Nasdaq-100 trails, with Nvidia lower.

Brent is down about 4% near $95. The dollar is softer, gold is up about 1% and bitcoin sits near $74,500. The VIX is near 23, down from 25.6 Friday.

The 10-year closed Friday at 4.86%. CME FedWatch put a December hike near 77% after Friday's strong payrolls.

Tuesday's October CPI, the last before the Fed's Dec. 9 decision, will arrive without its usual annual rate, because October 2025 data are missing after last year's shutdown. Friday's Evening Briefing set its test on core holding near its 2.6% annual rate. That number won't print.

Forecasters expect core up 0.2% for the month. Held for a year, core at 0.2% compounds to about 2.4%, and core at 0.3% to about 3.7%. Treasury sells $42 billion of 10-year notes the same day.

Market Implication

Friday's test needed an annual core rate, and Tuesday won't supply one. On the same series, one decimal of monthly core separates a 2.4% pace from 3.7%. If core prints 0.3% or higher, the 77% hike gains the inflation leg it has lacked, and the 10-year sale has to price that within hours. One decimal is doing a year's work.

Nvidia Fell Overnight. Chip Stocks Didn't Follow.

The board of Nvidia (NVDA) opened an independent investigation Sunday after reports that chief executive Jensen Huang was the target of a foreign intelligence effort. The board said it has confidence in Huang.

The stock traded near $178 in extended hours, about 5% below Friday's $186.64 close. That gap is worth more than $200 billion of market value.

Taiwan Semiconductor's U.S.-listed shares (TSM) were about 1% higher before the open, and rival AMD (AMD) about 3% higher.

The reports concern China, where Nvidia's sales already run on Washington's licenses. Nothing disclosed so far changes its revenue or costs. The outlook for the quarter Nvidia reports on Nov. 17 already assumes no data-center compute revenue from China.

Structural Setup

Monday's split separates Nvidia's demand from its permissions. Suppliers such as Taiwan Semiconductor are paid on chip orders, and nothing disclosed so far changes Nvidia's revenue. Its valuation also carries a founder and the licenses the reports touch. The market is pricing a person and a license, not a slowdown.

Crypto Traded Nvidia First. Bitcoin's Flush Came an Hour Later.

With U.S. exchanges shut Sunday, Nvidia-tracking perpetual futures on Hyperliquid were among the first to trade the news, near $180.

Bitcoin held steady for about an hour after the board's statement, then fell about $2,000 within the next hour to roughly $73,650, its lowest since August. More than $1 billion of leveraged positions were liquidated, mostly bullish bets, with ether the largest share, according to CoinGlass data.

Bitcoin's weekly close near $74,720 marked a fifth straight losing week. In the five sessions before it, U.S. spot bitcoin funds posted $1.28 billion of net outflows and turned negative for the year, according to SoSoValue data.

Bitcoin traded near $74,500 early Monday, about 1% below the $75,451 average cost of Strategy's (MSTR) 849,327 coins.

Sector Read

Weekend risk now has a venue, and that venue runs on leverage. Liquidations sell automatically as prices fall, so a thin Sunday book turned one hour of selling into a $2,000 drop. That makes fund flows, not price, the read on demand. If the spot funds keep posting net outflows with bitcoin below Strategy's cost, the weekend was demand leaving, not leverage clearing.

Rare Earths Got Two More Months. The U.S.-Only Pause Did Not.

Both sides pushed the truce's paperwork into January: Washington's 178 tariff exclusions on Chinese goods run through Jan. 9, 2027, and Beijing kept its extra 24% tariff on U.S. goods suspended for two more months.

China also extended the rare-earth piece that was due to lapse Tuesday. Six October 2025 export-control measures stay suspended through Jan. 10, 2027. Beijing announced the extension alongside its tariff and port-fee pauses.

One piece was left out. A separate suspension aimed only at the United States runs to Nov. 27, eighteen days away, and no extension has been announced. The April 2025 licensing regime on seven other rare earths was never suspended.

Watch Signal

The January dates are paperwork; the cliff is Nov. 27. Beijing renewed its broad export-control pause and left the one aimed at the United States on its original clock. That puts the truce's nearest test eighteen days out, inside this quarter. If Nov. 27 passes with no extension, a measure aimed only at the United States returns before any January date arrives.

Private Credit's Marks Held. $8.2 Billion Is Still Waiting to Leave.

Publicly registered nontraded business development companies raised $1.5 billion in the third quarter, the least since late 2020, according to preliminary Robert A. Stanger & Co. data. Redemptions outran new money by $4.1 billion, a third straight quarter of net outflows.

These funds buy back shares at net asset value, up to a quarterly cap. Redemption requests eased to 11.5% of net asset value from 12.5% in the second quarter. Funds still met only about 40%, leaving roughly $8.2 billion in line.

Yet net asset value per share held largely stable, and all 24 ranked funds posted positive returns. Payment-in-kind income, interest paid with more debt, is about 8% of BDC gross investment income, up from 5.5% in 2021, Moody's says.

A listed fund shows the other price. Goldman Sachs BDC (GSBD) closed Friday at $8.64, 26% below its $11.70 net asset value per share. Filings due around Nov. 16 and 17 will show marks and non-accruals across the group.

The Read

A stable NAV in a gated fund is not a stable price. Exits happen at net asset value, so holders wait in line instead of selling at a discount, and pressure shows up as unmet requests. The listed fund that has to meet a bid prints the other price, 26% below NAV. If the filings show non-accruals rising while requests hold near 11.5%, the queue becomes a credit problem.

Economic Data: New York Fed consumer inflation expectations for October and a $58 billion 3-year note auction, today. October CPI, Tuesday, followed by a $42 billion 10-year note auction. Bond market closed Wednesday for Veterans Day. $25 billion 30-year bond auction, Thursday. October producer prices, Friday.

Fed Speakers: Michelle Bowman, Austan Goolsbee and Thomas Barkin, today. Governor Christopher Waller, in London, Tuesday before the CPI release.

Earnings: KKR (KKR), Constellation Energy (CEG), NRG Energy (NRG), Ferguson (FERG), Barrick Mining (B) before open.

Overnight: Kospi -0.8% | Nikkei 225 +2.3% | Shanghai Composite +0.3% | FTSE 100 +0.7% | DAX +1.7%

Monday's biggest moves turn on access, not demand.

A founder under review. A U.S.-only suspension with eighteen days left. A queue that cannot reach a bid.

Today's session answers the first. If the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index finishes higher while Nvidia (NVDA) finishes lower, the market has kept the governance discount on one name. If Nvidia takes the index down with it, the probe has become a call on AI spending.