AI Earnings, the Fed, Inflation and Growth All Speak to the Market.
Stocks bounced Monday after a rough week, with Tesla jumping 6.0%, while oil eased on talk of de-escalation and Bitcoin slipped below $80,000 over the weekend. Friday’s closer called last week’s AI selloff real and said this week brings the Fed and the biggest AI earnings. FedWatch, the CME tool that turns futures prices into rate odds, now puts a December hike at 81.4%. That is up from 74.2% on Friday. This week, three things will speak to the market. Earnings from the companies that spend on AI computing, and from the ones that sell to them, will show whether the selloff settles down. The Fed’s statement and press conference on Wednesday, where a hold is expected, will show whether anything it says moves the needle on a hike in December or March. Thursday’s inflation and growth numbers will show what the economy is actually doing. Section 02 explains each voice and Section 03 maps how the week could play out.
Stocks bounced and oil eased, while Bitcoin fell below $80,000 over the weekend and Brazil’s markets sold off.
Monday brought a bounce led by AI-linked names. Tesla jumped 6.0% since Friday’s closer, and Intel and the Nasdaq 100 rose with it.
According to its filing with US regulators, Anthropic plans to list on the Nasdaq under the ticker ANT, and it made the filing public on Monday. An IPO is when a private company first sells shares to the public, and this filing sets no price range and cannot lead to sales until it takes effect.
Bitcoin dipped to $79,168 on Saturday as leveraged long bets were forced out, then recovered above $80,000 by Monday. Section 05 has the detail.
Friday’s fund flows, which posted after the closer went out, showed Bitcoin funds selling for a second straight day, with $137.94 million out after Thursday’s $635.49 million. Bitcoin ETFs are funds big investors use to hold Bitcoin without owning it directly, so money leaving them usually means institutions are selling. For the week the funds still took in $304.7 million, after losing $228.6 million the week before. Ethereum funds took in $4.35 million on Friday but still lost $220.6 million for the week.
Crude on the OKX perpetual spiked to $105.00 for one five minute bar around 6:50pm ET on Friday, then drifted lower over the weekend, fell to $100.43 early Monday and was near $102 by 2:43pm ET. Section 02 has the reasons.
Brazil’s markets sold off after President Lula won Sunday’s runoff, a result markets had not expected. The OKX perpetual for EWZ, a fund that holds Brazilian stocks and trades in dollars, fell 25.4% over the 24 hours to 2:43pm ET Monday. Reports on Monday said Brazil’s exchange halted trading for 30 minutes, its first halt since 2020. The runner-up, Flávio Bolsonaro, says he will ask courts to annul the result.
AI earnings, the Fed and Thursday’s economic data each get a turn to speak to the market.
The three voices arrive one after another, so each can confirm or undo the one before it.
Some companies, the spenders, are pouring enormous amounts into AI computing, and others, the earners, make money by selling them the chips and memory. The spenders have to prove the money is paying off, and the earners show how much of it is flowing to suppliers.
This week the spenders are Microsoft, Alphabet and Amazon, whose reports show whether the spending is turning into cloud sales, the question last week’s selloff in AI stocks left open. The earners are Intel and SanDisk, which report Thursday along with Amazon. Section 06 has the schedule.
Higher rates raise the cost of borrowing for the companies building AI, so the Fed and the economic numbers speak to the same trade. Strong earnings with cool inflation would let the AI trade settle, but hot inflation the next morning could undo it.
The Fed is expected to hold, with the chance of a hike this week at 10.5%, so the decision itself should not matter. What can matter is the wording of the statement and what Chair Kevin Warsh says afterward, because he has cut back on telling markets what is coming, so any hint about December or March would stand out. The chance of at least two hikes by March is 70.1%. That is up from 62.3% on Friday, after traders cut those odds all last week.
Thursday’s numbers land about 18 hours after Warsh speaks. Hot inflation, especially alongside strong growth, would give the Fed more reason to raise rates and lift the December and March odds, and cool readings would lower them.
Underneath all three sits the Middle East. Oil feeds the inflation worry behind those hike odds, so what happens there can move rates too. Oil fell Monday on hopes that tensions between the US and Iran will ease, after Qatari mediators traveled to Tehran on Sunday and Saudi, Turkish and Pakistani officials were set to hold talks there, Reuters reported. The risks have not gone away. The Houthis said they struck an airport and oil facilities in Saudi Arabia on Saturday, and Reuters also reported Monday that President Trump has not dispelled expectations of strikes on Iran after the November 3 midterms.
Earnings, the Fed and Thursday’s data decide whether the bounce holds, and Middle East headlines can change the rate story overnight.
Here’s the current state, plus three ways this week could evolve from here.
Until the Fed speaks on Wednesday, Middle East headlines are the main thing that can move prices. On Hyperliquid, a crypto exchange where positions are public, Bitcoin longs gave up over the weekend while new bets on a rise opened on the Nasdaq 100 and S&P 500. Section 05 has the detail.
This is the path where last week’s selloff turns out to be a break, not the start of a slide, and the December and March odds stop climbing.
This is the path where the selloff resumes, and it takes only one of the three voices to turn the week.
This path does not depend on earnings. Talks that hold would do the opposite, easing oil and rates, so the headlines can cut either way.
Three Academy lessons, run against this week’s real numbers.
Earn means buying the coin and selling the perpetual contract against it to collect funding. Borrow means raising cash against Bitcoin you keep, and the cost is the funding you pay. Earners got more than Friday for a third issue in a row, though the latest day paid 8.0%, below the 7-day average, so the improvement is cooling. Deribit stays the cheapest place to borrow, at 3.9% on average, though the latest day cost 6.1%, so borrowing is getting pricier again. Over the past 30 days the cost averaged 4.0%.
A covered call is when you hold a coin and sell someone the right to buy it from you at a higher price, collecting a fee up front, so your gain stops at that price. The strikes reset lower because prices fell. At a similar distance out of the money as Friday, yields rose, 11.0% against 10.1% on Bitcoin and 22.9% against 21.5% on Ethereum.
| Call | Strike | OTM | Fee per coin | Annualized yield |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bitcoin | $89,000 | 11.4% | $758.99 | 11.0% |
| Bitcoin, closer | $88,000 | 10.1% | $898.80 | 13.0% |
| Ethereum | $2,600 | 12.4% | $45.67 | 22.9% |
| Ethereum, closer | $2,550 | 10.3% | $55.50 | 27.8% |
| Annualized funding | 1-day | 7-day | 14-day | 30-day |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| WTI crude (long side) | -11.57% | -15.36% | -22.78% | -12.51% |
| Natural gas (short side) | +32.71% | +7.85% | +62.30% | +128.85% |
The spread of WTI crude against natural gas, long oil and short natural gas, is a funding-carry trade rather than a directional bet. The funding side keeps paying less, with the 7-day carry down to $445 now that the heaviest days of the monthly roll, when oil and natural gas perpetuals switch to the next month’s contract, have aged out of the window. The latest day would pay more, because natural gas’s 1-day funding jumped to 32.71%.
The pairs below track stocks. Intel against Tesla is the earner-versus-spender pair from Section 02, with Intel the earner and Tesla the spender. SanDisk is a flash memory maker and Dell a computer maker. Intel and SanDisk both report Thursday, so those two pairs are ones to watch.
| Pair | Now | Friday | Gaining ground since Friday |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intel vs. Tesla | 0.2322 | 0.2335 | Tesla |
| SanDisk vs. Dell | 2.68 | 2.71 | Dell |
| Bitcoin vs. QQQ | 111.94 | 115.16 | QQQ |
Tech and gold edged up, while Bitcoin, Ethereum and oil slipped.
On Hyperliquid, Bitcoin open interest fell 6% as longs gave up, with $90.06M of longs liquidated against $5.43M of shorts. Ethereum saw $27.38M of longs liquidated against $307.0K of shorts.
| Asset | Backdrop | Open interest change | Volume | Longs liquidated | Shorts liquidated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bitcoin | longs giving up | -6.01%$3.4B open | $6.17B | $90.06M | $5.43M |
| Ethereum | fresh shorts opening | +2.86%$2.6B open | $2.32B | $27.38M | $307.0K |
| WTI crude | fresh shorts opening | +4.31%$222M open | $354M | $346.0K | $91.5K |
| Gold | flat | -2.70%$329M open | $91M | $14.6K | $0 |
| Silver | flat | -0.26%$169M open | $90M | $6.8K | $293 |
| Nasdaq 100the index QQQ tracks | fresh longs opening | +2.51%$294M open | $442M | $1.8K | $116.1K |
| S&P 500the index SPY tracks | fresh longs opening | +1.18%$390M open | $394M | $509.3K | $134.0K |
Hyperliquid is a different exchange from the prices above, so its numbers will not match them exactly. Nasdaq 100 and S&P 500 are the indexes that QQQ and SPY track. Hyperliquid lists the indexes themselves and has no QQQ or SPY market.
Open interest is the number of contracts still open, measured in contracts so price moves do not distort it. Volume is the dollar value of all trades over the same window, estimated from Hyperliquid’s one-minute price data. A backdrop needs price and open interest to each move 0.5% or more: open interest up with price down is fresh shorts opening, both down is longs giving up, open interest down with price up is shorts covering, and smaller moves read flat. A liquidation is a position an exchange force-closes because the trader can no longer cover the losses. Longs liquidated are traders betting on a rise who were forced out as price fell, and shorts liquidated are the reverse.
The Fed, big tech earnings and the key data land within two days of each other.
Earnings, the Fed and Thursday’s data are the movers. Plan for gaps.
Bitcoin has no earnings of its own, but it has traded with tech and rate worries, so the AI reports, the Fed’s statement and press conference, and Thursday’s inflation and growth numbers can all move it.
The biggest gaps can come at three moments: the Fed’s statement on Wednesday, the inflation and growth numbers on Thursday morning, and the opens after the earnings reports. Middle East headlines can gap oil at any hour.
The market is waiting on the earnings, the Fed’s statement and Thursday’s inflation and growth numbers. Watching how they land before choosing a direction is a position too.
This content is produced by Harmonic for educational purposes. It is strategy education, not investment advice.