🏦 The Fed held. Two officials wanted a hike.
Kevin Warsh walked out of yesterday's press conference without tipping his hand on December — and markets are still trying to figure out what that silence means.
Listen to the same-day episode — Ep. 093
🏦 The Fed held. Two officials wanted a hike.
Kevin Warsh walked out of yesterday's press conference without tipping his hand on December — and markets are still trying to figure out what that silence means.
📊 Today's Numbers
Fed Funds Rate ■ 3.75–4.00%: held, but two officials voted to hike
Brent Crude ▲ $114–115/bbl: up ~77% year-to-date after refinery strike
U.S. 10-Year Treasury ▲ 5.02%: elevated, and allied demand is quietly disappearing
Alphabet (GOOGL) ▼ ~9% after hours: Search miss reopens the AI disruption question
DXY (Dollar Index) ▲ above 102.00: strongest in two weeks post-Fed decision
Headline PCE Inflation ▲ 3.6% YoY: still too high for comfort, not high enough to force the Fed's hand
🏦 MACROECONOMIC
Photo: Edmond Dantès
The Fed Held. Two of Its Own Officials Disagreed.
The FOMC voted 10-2 to keep rates at 3.75–4.00% yesterday. That's the headline. The real story is the two dissents from Governors Lisa Cook and Cleveland's Beth Hammack, both pushing for a hike. That kind of internal split hasn't shown up in this cycle before.
December hike odds jumped to ~40% after the vote, up from near-zero a week ago
30-year mortgage rates sit at 7.32%, meaning monthly payments on a median-priced home are thousands more than in 2021
PCE inflation at 3.6% YoY gives the hawks just enough ammunition to stay loud heading into December
💬 Warsh didn't rule a December hike in or out. At 5.02% on the 10-year, the bond market is already doing some of the Fed's work — but whether that's enough is genuinely unclear.
📈 EQUITIES
Photo: Tara Winstead
Alphabet Missed on Search. The Market Didn't Wait Around.
Alphabet's Q3 revenue of $128 billion sounds big. It was $2-3 billion short of what analysts expected, almost entirely because Search came in at $63 billion, roughly $2 billion below consensus. In after-hours trading, the stock dropped about 9%.
Search miss of ~$2bn is the most concrete evidence yet that generative AI tools are pulling advertising dollars away from Google
Microsoft, by contrast, beat on Azure cloud: 48% growth to $33 billion, guiding 49–50% next quarter
Index-fund holders feel this Friday morning: Alphabet's weight in the S&P 500 and Nasdaq means the after-hours drop lands in 401(k) and pension accounts at the open
The divergence between these two is the sharpest version yet of a question the market's been circling: who actually profits from AI, and who gets disrupted by it.
🛢️ COMMODITIES
Photo: XT7 Core
A Missile Flew Toward the World's Biggest Refinery. Oil Felt It Immediately.
The Houthis claimed a ballistic missile strike on Saudi Arabia's Ras Tanura refinery on October 27-28. Saudi authorities confirmed air defenses intercepted five missiles in total. Whether the refinery itself was hit directly is still contested. Brent crude didn't wait for confirmation.
Brent rose 1.80% to $111.33/bbl on Oct 28, with pricing near $115/bbl by early October 29
Ras Tanura handles 550,000 barrels per day. Global inventories are already 509 million barrels below pre-conflict levels, so there's no buffer if this disrupts supply
WTI is up ~77% year-to-date at ~$101.97/bbl: that's not a spike, that's a new floor, and it's the single biggest driver of inflation in Canada, the U.S., and Europe right now
💬 At $115 oil with empty strategic buffers, "contained a fire near the terminal" is doing a lot of work as reassurance.
📰 Also Today
Bank of Canada raises overnight rate to 2.50%: First hike in over three years, driven by oil-fuelled CPI running near 3% since April. The BoC revised its 2027 inflation forecast up to 3.1% from 2.0% — TD Economics is pricing another 25 bps in Q1 2027, and USD/CAD dropped to ~1.3975 on the news.
SK Hynix posts record Q3 operating profit of 83.3 trillion won: Up from 11.4 trillion won a year ago — a 630% surge on revenue that jumped 328% year-over-year, driven by AI data-centre memory demand. The result sent SK Hynix shares up ~13% and pulled the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index up 6.5% on the week.
Allied nations cut U.S. Treasury purchases to lowest level since 2021: Japan's net buying collapsed ~99% to just $389 million in the first eight months of 2026. South Korea became a net seller with $24 billion in disposals. Less demand from anchor buyers pushes yields higher — and the 10-year is already at 5.02%.
🎧 Listen to today's episode — The Open Bell
The December hike decision will look very different once we see November's PCE print — worth sharing today's issue before that data resets the conversation.
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Not investment advice. For informational purposes only.