The Fed Hikes Today. The Buyers Left Yesterday.

Stock Market Edge

Chevron Rallied and the Rest Paid the Fuel Bill – Almost 350 S&P members fell as the ten-year found 5.00%

Premarket snapshot:

S&P 500 futures are 0.2% higher at 04:30 ET, Nasdaq 100 futures 0.4% higher and Dow futures up 58 points. Tuesday closed at 52,093.11, 7,585.73 and 25,981.57, with the S&P 500 ending under the 7,600 level near its 50-day average. The VIX trades at 17.03. A modest bid from a market that has read the calendar.

Sector rotation:

Energy took the only cheque. Chevron rose 2.53% and 3M 1.75%, while Nike fell 2.35%, Alphabet 2.28% and Amazon 2.00%. Chips and cloud were sold for a second day on talk that the builders of AI might slow down, which is an unusual thing to be punished for.

Earnings or guidance:

Lennar reports today, a homebuilder presenting into a 5.00% ten-year, which is brave. Housing starts follow tomorrow. The week’s decisive print was not corporate at all.

Cross-asset nuance:

Treasury’s series closed Tuesday at 4.67% on the two-year, 5.00% on the ten, 5.40% on the twenty and 5.36% on the thirty. The dollar index held near 99.6. Brent settled near $109. Gold bounced 0.99% to 4,376.1 from its lowest since early August, the one asset on screen not asking for a yield.

📊 There’s a level on SPX I’m watching closely this morning. My full analysis briefing has it – plus what happens if we hold it, and what happens if we don’t. [Read it here →]

Crypto Market Edge

Congress Declined to Clarify and Bitcoin Understood Perfectly – A 49 to 50 vote, $600m of liquidations and a cost basis drifting away

Price snapshot:

Bitcoin trades 75,843.65 at 04:30 ET after falling as much as 5.3% on Tuesday and slipping under $75,000 at the low. It had visited $79,530 overnight, briefly optimistic. Ether dropped to about $2,400. More than $600m was liquidated in 24 hours, mostly longs who had priced a law that did not pass.

Flows & positioning:

Farside confirms $159.9m of net inflows on 14 September: IBIT $134.3m, FBTC $53.3m, MSBT $9.7m, ARKB minus $42.0m. It ended four outflow sessions. It also happened the day before the vote, so it is a receipt for optimism, not a verdict on the outcome. Tuesday’s row is still blank.

Leadership & rotation:

The regulated wrappers took the regulatory hit. Coinbase fell as much as 12% intraday and Circle 13%. Strategy dropped more than 5%, and bitcoin now sits about 5.6% below its 80,318 average cost, up from a 3.3% gap on Friday.

Catalysts & roadmap:

Cloture failed 49 to 50 against 60 needed, and coverage says Senate market-structure work is done for 2026. The SEC has proposed a $75m token exemption instead, so rulemaking continues without the rule. The Fed decides at 14:00 ET, and a hawkish dot plot would land on an asset class that has just lost its legislative safety net.

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TL;DR – The Bottom Line

• The number is 52.5%: the record-low foreign share at Tuesday’s $13bn 20-year sale, which cleared at 5.420% with a 2.0bp tail. The buyers moved first.
• The ten-year closed at 5.00% on Treasury’s series, its highest close there since 2007. The Fed now lifts its range to a full point below that.
• The Senate blocked the Clarity Act 49 to 50. Bitcoin fell through $75,000, Coinbase dropped as much as 12% and $600m of leverage went home.
• Brent settled near $109 as Saudi Arabia cancelled European cargoes. Chevron rallied, almost 350 S&P members fell, and the index closed under 7,600.
• The statement lands at 14:00 ET. We have filed our view that the hike is not a dip to buy, marked against the 29 Sep close.

📌 Fun Fact

The Fed’s Target Range Is Younger Than the iPhone

Before December 2008 the committee set one number, not two

On 16 December 2008 the Federal Open Market Committee set a target range of 0% to 0.25% for the federal funds rate. Before that meeting it had always announced a single target rate. Today’s expected 3.75% to 4.00% is a format that has not yet reached its eighteenth birthday.