Powell’s diary from beyond the Fed Chair grave.

Stock Market Edge

Bonds keep selling. Tech keeps praying. Nvidia gets the altar tonight. Bond rout: steady. Earnings calendar: unsteady. Wednesday picks one.

1. Premarket snapshot: ES indicates roughly 7,380 at 09:25 ET, fractionally above where Tuesday’s cash close abandoned it at 7,353.61. Tuesday gave back 0.67% on SPX and 0.84% on Nasdaq, with the 30-year landing at 5.19%, a yield that would have triggered a 2008 movie montage two cycles ago and now triggers a shrug.
2. Sector rotation: Tech took the heaviest blow Tuesday as Nasdaq shed 220 points. Defensives held. Communications and staples got the modest “at least you exist” bid. Home Depot reported 5% sales growth Tuesday morning, the small consolation prize for retail names trying to look indispensable ahead of Walmart Thursday.
3. Earnings or guidance: Nvidia headlines tonight. Consensus $79.2 billion revenue, $1.78 EPS, both up 78% to 120% year over year. Target, Lowe’s, TJX, Analog Devices, and Intuit also print Wednesday. The market has decided which beats count and will politely forget the rest.
4. Cross-asset nuance: 10-year holds 4.676%. 30-year sits at 5.19%. Brent $110.73, Hormuz closed, Trump’s strike postponed but on call. Dollar index 99.31. Gold $4,483. Risk appetite, having considered all available evidence, took Tuesday off and asked Nvidia for a note.

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📊 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 →]

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Crypto Market Edge

Bitcoin loses 5%. ETFs find the exits. Saylor finds the iceberg. Diamond hands opened in May. Very quietly. With great ceremony.

1. Price snapshot: Bitcoin sat near $76,800 by Tuesday evening, the lowest open since May 1, capping the worst week since February with a tidy 4.83% decline. Ethereum at $2,115, lowest since April 7. The chart, for once, told the truth.
2. Flows and positioning: Spot bitcoin ETFs lost $1.04 billion across May 11 to May 15, the largest weekly outflow since February. Ethereum funds bled $255 million more. Two months of “institutional conviction,” $1.25 billion of it, walked out in five sessions. GBTC and BITB carried the suitcases.
3. Leadership and rotation: Altcoin ETFs caught the rotation money. XRP took $60.5 million. Solana $58.1 million. LINK, HYPE, HBAR, and DOGE also drew positive flows. VanEck and Grayscale refiled their BNB ETF amendments while everyone panicked about the main event. The institutional bid moved sideways, not out.
4. Catalysts and roadmap: Strategy’s 818,334 BTC position carries an average cost of $75,537. Saylor stands $1,300 above being underwater on a stack roughly the size of a small nation’s reserves, doing his Jack-on-the-Titanic-deck impression. Immediate support $76,000. FOMC minutes feed risk appetite, whichever way risk currently faces.

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TL;DR – The Bottom Line

• Futures sit where Tuesday left them. The 30-year at 5.19%, a yield that used to trigger Hollywood recession montages and now triggers a shrug. The bond rout is steady.
• Nvidia reports fiscal Q1 after the close. Consensus $79 billion revenue, 78% growth, 90% implied beat. Tonight Wall Street sacrifices its chicken to one chip vendor.
• Powell’s final FOMC minutes drop at 14:00 ET. Powell left May 15. Warsh chaired five days. We are reading the diary of a man who has left the building.
• Bitcoin held $77,000 overnight after its worst week since February. Saylor stands $1,300 above the iceberg. Diamond hands, very quietly and ceremoniously, opened.
• Trump’s Iran strike sits postponed, optional, ready for any moment. Brent holds $110.73. Hormuz stays closed. Schrödinger’s war: simultaneously on, off, and irrelevant to the chart.

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