It’s a Fed Day with FOMC Meeting Minutes released @ 2:00pm ET. Analysts will be digging through the report’s minutia, looking for new clues about Fed member internal divisions and the outlook for future interest rate cuts as the US government shutdown deprives the policymakers of key economic data.
On Tuesday, all three major US averages closed lower after reports that Oracle may have weaker-than-expected cloud margins, fueling fresh concerns about the AI trade. The declines mark the end of seven-day winning streaks for the S&P 500 and Nasdaq.
The US government shutdown is on its seventh day. President Trump is backing Congressional Republicans’ stance of no negotiations with Democrats over healthcare subsidies. Trump is threatening to not back pay for certain furloughed workers. Trump commented, “There are some people that really don’t deserve to be taken care of and we’ll take care of them in a different way.”
The White House Budget Office head Russell Vought has drafted a memo that says federal workers are not guaranteed compensation for shutdown time. The threat is the latest in a series of hardball tactics to put pressure on the Democrats to approve the Republican continuing resolution to reopen the federal government for a few weeks.
The Trump administration has frozen infrastructure projects in states that voted Democratic, threatened to fire federal workers, and used agency websites and out-of-office emails to blame the “radical left Democrats” for the shutdown.
Gold has blasted through $4000/oz, up from below $2000/oz just 2 years ago. The yellow metal is up over 50% in 2025 on rising uncertainties over global trade, the Federal Reserve independence, US fiscal stability, and geopolitical tensions. Additionally, global central banks are increasing their gold purchases as the value and faith in the US dollar declines. Finally, gold ETFs investor demand is also strong.
Bridgewater’s Ray Dalio and Citadel’s Ken Griffen have both declared that gold is more of a safe haven than the US dollar. Silver has yet to crack its 2011 all-time high, but could easily do that this week.
Elon Musk’s xAI has raised over $20 billion in an ongoing funding round. The funding includes equity and debt financing from Nvidia (NVDA) in a special purpose vehicle that will purchase Nvidia GPUs and rent them to xAI for use in their Colossus 2, Memphis data center project. The unique deal structure of using GPUs as opposed to money could provide a playbook for tech firms looking to limit debt exposure.
No corporate earnings of interest for today.
Despite the government shutdown, Crude Oil inventories @ 10:30am ET is listed as scheduled for today. Fed speakers include St. Louis Fed’s Alberto Musalem @ 9:20am ET, Fed governor Michael Barr @ 9:30am ET, Chicago Fed’s Austan Goolsbee @ 10:00am ET, Dallas Fed’s Lorie Logan @ 1:15pm ET, and Minneapolis Fed’s Neel Kashkari @ 3:15pm ET.
Volatility jumped on Tuesday’s S&P 500 selloff. The ES 5-day average daily range is up to 53 points.
Whale bias is bearish into the US session open on moderate overnight large trader volume.
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