Jobs, Chip Earnings, Midterms and Iran All Hit the Market This Week.
Stocks bounced at the open on Monday and then sold off, while oil fell about 7% and Bitcoin held near $77,000. Last week’s AI selloff did not end, as Intel, SanDisk and Dell all fell hard again. Four factors will move the market this week: the midterms, the economy, Iran and earnings. FedWatch, the CME tool that turns futures prices into rate odds, puts a December hike at 72.9%, little changed since Friday. Section 02 explains each factor and Section 03 maps how the week could play out.
Stocks gave back an early bounce, oil fell hard, and Bitcoin held steady.
Stocks bounced at the open and gave it all back by the afternoon. CNBC reported Monday that the Nasdaq and S&P 500 both closed lower as investors moved out of tech, while the Dow held a gain. Chip and hardware stocks fell hardest, led by Intel, with Dell and SanDisk close behind. Oracle fell sharply after saying it plans to raise $20 billion in stock and bonds to pay for its AI buildout, CNBC reported.
Oil fell hard on hopes of a deal with Iran. CNBC reported Monday that Secretary of State Marco Rubio said President Trump has not decided to attack and would prefer a peaceful settlement. UPI reported that Iran’s negotiators left Qatar on Sunday with a draft proposal.
Bitcoin ETFs are funds big investors use to hold Bitcoin without owning it directly, so money leaving them usually means institutions are selling. Friday’s flows, posted after the closer went out, showed Bitcoin funds selling about $643 million. That ended four straight days of buying and left them about $203 million out for the week. Ether funds sold about $156 million, their fifth straight day of selling. Bitcoin itself held steady, even as Binance reopened withdrawals on Sunday and customers pulled billions out, Reuters reported Monday.
The Institute for Supply Management’s factory survey, out Monday, showed activity growing faster than forecast, with price pressures easing a little. Gold and silver rallied, while the 30-year borrowing cost and the dollar slipped a little.
The midterms, the economy, Iran and AI earnings are the four factors that can move the market this week.
The four factors arrive across five days, so each can confirm or undo the one before it.
The midterms come first, because results start arriving Tuesday night, before stocks open Wednesday. Kalshi’s prediction markets put a Democratic sweep of both chambers at about 70% on Monday. Quartz, citing Bloomberg, reported Monday that stocks are expected to fall if Democrats win both chambers. CNBC reported Monday that JPMorgan sees a possible AI selloff if a sweep brings more regulation of data centers. JPMorgan expects a Trump veto to block any bill that limits AI. It expects a split Congress to lift stocks a little, and a Republican sweep a bit more, because neither adds new regulatory risk. Our read: the sweep is largely expected, so a surprise matters more than the result. Timing matters too, because control of the Senate may take days to settle, and any Iran strike would come after the vote. Section 06 has the timeline.
The economy comes next. Two numbers can move the market this week, Wednesday’s services survey and Friday’s jobs report. September’s jobs report was weak, so a strong one would raise the odds of a December rate hike and a weak one would lower them. Rate hikes matter because they raise the cost of borrowing for the companies building AI. Our read: last week hike odds fell as stocks fell, because raising rates into a falling AI trade looked harder to do.
Iran is the wild card. Oil feeds inflation worries, so a strike could undo Monday’s drop and push rates and the dollar higher. Oil fell on hopes of a deal. But the Wall Street Journal reported last Wednesday that Gulf states were told to prepare for a short, intense campaign after the vote. It also reported that Trump is leaning toward a large attack but has not decided. Our read: oil has priced out some of that risk, so a strike headline could push it up fast.
Earnings run all week. Some companies, the spenders, are pouring enormous amounts into AI computing, and others, the earners, make money selling them chips and memory. Last week the market punished the spenders for burning cash, and then the earners too, with Intel hit for a weak outlook. This week the earners AMD, Qualcomm and Arm report, along with Apple and Palantir. If the earners reassure, the selling may be done, and if they disappoint, it may spread.
The vote, jobs, Iran and chip earnings decide whether the AI selloff ends, and oil is the swing between the data and the Fed.
Here’s the current state, plus three ways this week could evolve from here.
Hike odds barely moved. Our read: a strong factory reading and falling oil roughly offset each other. On Hyperliquid, a crypto exchange where positions are public, traders opened new bets that oil and stocks would keep falling. Section 05 has the detail.
This path needs three things: earners that reassure, a jobs number that is firm without being hot, and no strike headlines after the vote. Then the selloff could settle and the Fed story would stay quiet. If the earners disappoint or the jobs report runs hot, the selloff could resume.
This is the path where the vote keeps the AI selloff going. A split Congress or a Republican surprise would do the opposite, and the Senate count may take days to settle.
This path does not depend on earnings or the jobs report. Talks that hold would do the opposite, easing oil and rates, so the headlines can cut either way. Our read: oil is the swing, because strikes plus a hot jobs report would hit AI stocks from two sides.
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. The best Earn rate moved from Hyperliquid to Crypto.com and rose again. It peaked over the weekend and is easing. Borrowing on Deribit stayed the cheapest, and its cost fell back after Friday’s spike.
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. Your gain stops at that price. The board is the same as Friday’s, with the December 25 expiry now 52 days out, and yields moved by less than a point. Our read: sellers of these calls are not being paid much more, even in a week packed with news.
| Call | Strike | OTM | Fee per coin | Annualized yield |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bitcoin, closer | $85,000 | 10.6% | $1,748.90 | 15.8% |
| Bitcoin | $86,000 | 11.9% | $1,518.27 | 13.7% |
| Ethereum | $2,500 | 11.3% | $85.36 | 26.4% |
| Ethereum, wider | $2,600 | 15.7% | $61.78 | 19.1% |
Lesson 7 pairs one stock against another, so you trade which one does better, not which way the market goes. Last week’s earnings split AI stocks into spenders and earners, and Intel, an earner, fell hard on a weak outlook. Against Tesla, a spender, it is now at its lowest in the window, about a third below where it started on Thursday afternoon. Our read: that makes Intel look cheap next to Tesla, but a gap like this can keep widening. Holding the cheap side also has a cost. For long Intel and short Tesla, the dashboard projects a funding cost of about $327 over seven days on $200,000, because the Intel side pays funding and Tesla’s does not.
The standing oil and natural gas trade, long oil and short gas, still earns funding, but a little less than on Friday as oil fell.
| Pair | Now | Friday | Gaining ground since Friday |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intel vs. Tesla | 0.1492 | 0.1633 | Tesla |
| WTI vs. natural gas | 33.42 | 35.60 | Natural gas |
| SanDisk vs. Dell | 2.73 | 2.71 | SanDisk |
| Bitcoin vs. QQQ | 112.70 | 110.92 | Bitcoin |
Oil fell hard, chips and the Nasdaq 100 sold off, and gold and silver rallied.
On Hyperliquid, WTI crude open interest jumped 18% to $220M as price fell, a sign of fresh shorts. Bitcoin saw the biggest liquidations, $16.22M of longs and $14.10M of shorts.
| Asset | Backdrop | Open interest change | Volume | Longs liquidated | Shorts liquidated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bitcoin | flat | -2.42%$3.2B open | $3.99B | $16.22M | $14.10M |
| Ethereum | flat | -1.66%$2.2B open | $1.55B | $689.1K | $3.83M |
| WTI crude | fresh shorts opening | +18.16%$220M open | $530M | $3.66M | $3.7K |
| Gold | fresh longs opening | +1.74%$317M open | $122M | $49.5K | $80.4K |
| Silver | shorts covering | -10.38%$198M open | $284M | $0 | $80.7K |
| Nasdaq 100the index QQQ tracks | fresh shorts opening | +9.41%$282M open | $526M | $323.5K | $7.1K |
| S&P 500the index SPY tracks | fresh shorts opening | +2.50%$370M open | $364M | $371.5K | $36.9K |
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.
Jobs, big chip earnings and the midterms land across five days.
Four things can gap prices this week. Size for it.
Spot holders face no liquidation, but a crowded week can still swing prices hard. Decide before Friday’s jobs report what move would change your plan.
Leverage is where a gap hurts most. Volatility tends to build into election weeks, and this week also carries the jobs report, AMD and Arm earnings and Iran headlines. A common approach is to trade smaller and keep more distance from your liquidation price. Crypto and the oil contracts on exchanges like OKX trade through the weekend, so Sunday night can gap too.
Staying out is a position. Senate control may take days to settle and the jobs report lands Friday, so waiting for clarity is a reasonable choice.
This content is produced by Harmonic for educational purposes. It is strategy education, not investment advice.