A mostly positive session despite the absence of positive headlines… The Nasdaq finished lower, while the Dow pushed higher and the S&P 500 ended basically flat-green. Under the hood, breadth improved: the NYSE Composite, Russell 2000, and Transports all climbed, and Utilities outperformed. Call it a mini-rotation away from the megacaps and toward defensives and cyclicals.

The macro mix stayed weird in a good way. Gold popped (north of 3,910) even as equities held up and the 10-year yield ticked higher (~4.12). That’s a classic “believe the rally, hedge anyway” tape. Oil inched up, adding a small tailwind to energy without changing the bigger trend story.

Bottom line: the market didn’t break; it broadened. Big Tech took a breather while the rest of the tape did some lifting. With gold screaming and yields nudging up, positioning still says caution beneath the muted cheer. If this rotation sticks, it’s healthy. If it fades, we’re back to a narrow climb that’s one headline away from wobbling.

This company is the lifeblood of AI data centers, yet almost no one has caught up with the story.

Their hardware is so essential that the data center industry uses enough of it to stretch around the world 8 times – in a single building!

So, if you own Nvidia stock now, you might be well-served to sell those shares and check out this under-the-radar play instead.

Or if you missed the boat on Nvidia, this is a rare second chance to target tremendous profit potential as AI data centers spring up in every corner of the world.

Get my full take on this exciting play right here…

Bill “Mish” Shedlock calls out a fiscal and monetary balancing act the Fed wouldn’t want to admit: in trying to squash inflation since 2021, maybe they overdid it. His piece here asks a provocative question: when we look back over decades, has the Fed now over-corrected for inflation’s absence? And at what cost?

He points to the deep variances in inflation timing across sectors. Things like housing, healthcare, and education stayed sticky. Meanwhile, durable goods dipped hard. That means the Fed’s anti-inflation moves have disproportionately hurt certain industries without picking down others. Shedlock suggests that “making up” for past inflation may be pushing policy into new distortion territory.

For traders, this is more than rhetorical. If the Fed has overshot inflation’s mark, it means rate cuts might come later or be bleaker than expected. Trades built on a “Fed easing soon” narrative may get squeezed. The message: read the real curves, not just the headlines… policy turning too cautious could leave the market overleveraged and underprepared.

In this episode of Odd Lots, CME Group Chairman & CEO Terry Duffy discusses the exchange’s bold strategy: bringing retail trading into the heart of markets. He argues this isn’t just a gimmick, but a structural move for equalizing access, shifting fee models, and creating new liquidity layers. Duffy sees the democratization of derivatives as central to CME’s future.

He explains how CME is investing in UX, mobile access, educational overlays, and fractional futures to appeal to new entrants. The goal? A more dispersed base of volume and deeper order books. He also teases how CME’s push could reshape volatility dynamics, fee arbitrage, and even regulatory supervision over retail participants.

For traders, this shift matters. A more retail-driven futures ecosystem could introduce new flow patterns, margin dynamics, and “volatility from below” where small players amplify moves via scale. If Duffy is right, the next frontier in derivatives isn’t exotic products, it’s onboarding millions of smaller bets into the same arena.