The 10/27-28 meeting is expected to end in a hold, with the fed funds futures-implied probability of an October hike falling to about 5% from 37% at the end of September and 15% at the start of the week. By contrast, the probability of a 25bp hike in December stands at about 71% according to CME FedWatch. September CPI of 3.7% and one-year inflation expectations of 4.7% support a hike, while consumer sentiment of 48.0 and the 10/22 growth scare sit on the other side. If the Fed holds while strongly signaling a December hike, it could clash with growth concerns and further weaken cyclicals.

The current rate level is [not collected]. The eurozone composite PMI fell to 51.9, a 4-month low, TTF gas is at its highest since 2022, and the French 10-year yield hit 5.126% intraday on 10/22, the highest since 2002. Moody's kept France's rating at Aa3 (negative) after the close on 10/23, contrary to market expectations of a downgrade to A1, lifting near-term downgrade risk. EUR/USD is at 1.1204 (-0.27%).

The BOJ raised rates on September 18 and meets on October 29-30. Amid the US tech selloff, the yen strengthened to 156.08 per dollar on 10/23, its strongest since the September hike. This is seen as safe-haven demand rather than intervention.

The BOK unanimously held its policy rate at 3.00% on October 22. It is a pause after consecutive hikes in July and August, and Governor Shin Hyun-song said growth and inflation are stronger than the August forecasts (3.3% this year, 2.9% next year), signaling a continued tightening stance and the possibility of further hikes. Along with a warning about expansionary fiscal policy, he said long-dated corporate bond issuance by hyperscalers is competing with Korean government bonds and pushing up long-term rates. The market expects a terminal rate of 3.50-3.75% next year (2-3 more hikes).

The Dow fell 652.82 points (-1.23%) to 52,215.16, while the S&P 500 closed -0.52% and the Nasdaq -0.21%. The semiconductor index, which had its biggest drop since June the previous day, rebounded 0.6%, but consumer staples and financials led the decline, and only energy rose, gaining 2.4% to a record high. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq posted a second straight weekly decline and the Dow a third straight weekly gain, and a third of S&P 500 companies report earnings next week.

After Houthi rebels again attacked Saudi airports and Aramco facilities, Brent rose 3.14% to settle at $116.72 and WTI gained 3.8% to $103.27. Aramco evacuated its Dhahran headquarters for the first time since the Iran war began, and Brent posted a third straight weekly gain. Airlines, transport and discount retailers sensitive to diesel costs were weak.

President Trump claimed the Strait of Hormuz is under US control, and Treasury Secretary Bessent released data showing crude exports via Hormuz, the Gulf of Oman and the Red Sea have recovered to 17-18 million barrels per day. As Prime Minister Netanyahu called for the overthrow of Iran's regime, weekend hedging demand ahead of possible renewed strikes around the November 3 midterm elections pushed oil higher (StoneX). As of collection, there were no reports of weekend strikes.

The October final reading of 48.0 was below September (48.1) but above the preliminary 46.3. The current conditions index fell to 46.7 and the expectations index rose to 48.8. One-year inflation expectations rose to 4.7% and five-year to 3.5%.

The Fed is expected to hold its policy rate at 3.75-4.00% on October 27-28, with the probability of an October hike down to about 5% from 37% at the end of September. By contrast, the probability of a 25bp hike in December is about 71% according to CME FedWatch. The 10-year yield rebounded to 4.99% after its biggest daily drop in more than two years.

CoreWeave, Nebius and IREN have each fallen more than 30% this month, and CoreWeave's 5-year CDS has topped 1,000bp. CoreWeave fell another 2.5% on Friday after price target cuts from Morgan Stanley and UBS. Because Nvidia is entangled in the lease and guarantee structures of these customers, the spillover of credit risk is at issue, and OpenAI is also raising up to $30 billion after cutting its valuation target from $1.4 trillion to $1.25 trillion.

On reports that SpaceX is negotiating leases on about 80,000 cell sites to build a fourth national wireless carrier, AT&T fell about 8% and T-Mobile about 7.7% at the close. Crown Castle rose about 9% and American Tower about 4%. SpaceX also agreed earlier this month to acquire nationwide 800MHz spectrum, but analysts say the buildout and financing will take time.

Moody's kept France's rating at Aa3 (negative) after the close. The market had expected a downgrade to A1, and the French 10-year yield had topped 5% for the first time since 2002, widening the spread over Germany to around 170bp. The affirmation hinges on passage of a deficit-reducing 2027 budget and easing social unrest.

Q3 net income rose 28% to $3.71 billion and adjusted EPS of $4.68 beat expectations, prompting the company to raise its full-year EPS guidance to $17.60-17.90. At the same time, it will cut about 3,500 jobs (5%) and book $336 million in restructuring charges. Revenue slightly missed consensus, and the stock fell 3-4%, adding to the Dow's losses.

The KOSPI opened down 2.36% and slid as low as 5,305.98 (-4.12%) intraday before turning positive about 20 minutes before the close to finish at 5,550.30 (+0.30%). Foreign investors sold about 1.0938 trillion won on the KOSPI, while institutions bought about 800 billion won. The KOSDAQ fell 1.62% to 751.69, its lowest since July 21.

SK hynix disclosed that it has halted its review of a pre-IPO and IPO for its US second-tier subsidiary Solidigm. This is seen as a response to the chairman of the Financial Services Commission and the governor of the Financial Supervisory Service indicating at a parliamentary audit that they view it as a duplicate listing. Boston Dynamics (Hyundai Motor Group), Bear Robotics (LG Electronics) and Hyaxiom (Doosan) are also affected, and on the same day Hyundai Motor fell 1.99% and Doosan 4.46%.

Attention has shifted to Q3 earnings on the 28th and additional shareholder returns said to exceed 30 trillion won. Q3 consensus is revenue of 98.2257 trillion won and operating profit of 76.964 trillion won. Analysts say the buying gap left by the early completion of the 40 trillion won share buyback on the 21st needs to be filled by improved foreign investor flows.

This week, SK hynix earnings on the 28th, Samsung Electronics earnings on the 29th and the FOMC are expected to set the direction. NH Investment & Securities projected a weekly KOSPI band of 5,100-6,400. Analysts say the recent plunge reflects the absence of buyers to absorb foreign selling rather than damage to fundamentals.

The won-dollar rate fell below 1,330 won on a closing basis on the 20th, setting a new low for the year, and the won has appreciated 3.8% since last month's FOMC despite a rising dollar index. Foreign investors sold about 38 trillion won over 30 trading days, but a record current account surplus supported the won. Eugene Investment & Securities sees a range of 1,250-1,420 won next year.

China's CXMT is expected to post Q3 revenue of 114.7-119.7 billion yuan (about 23-24 trillion won), about 7 times the previous year. Its global DRAM market share reached 10% in Q2, up 6 percentage points in a year, and monthly wafer capacity is expected to grow to 500,000 wafers by the end of 2028.

The KOSPI ended the fourth week down 2.08% at 5,550.30. Defense stocks plunged on valuation compression from rising rates and earnings worries, with LIG Defense & Aerospace down 17.16%, Hanwha Systems down 16.08%, Hanwha Ocean down 14.92% and Hyundai Rotem down 14.65%. Samsung E&A jumped 37.16% for the week on an earnings surprise with Q3 operating profit of 500.6 billion won (+183%), and Samsung Biologics also rose 12.94%.

Market data from 10/23 partly supports this reading. That day, technology (XLK +0.49%) and semiconductors (SMH +0.74%) rose, while the Dow fell -1.23%, consumer staples -1.92% and financials -1.32%, with non-tech sectors falling more. This means macro factors, rates (10-year at 4.988%) and oil (Brent at $116.72), pressured sectors indiscriminately. However, the Nasdaq's -2.60% on 10/22 was triggered by an AI-specific catalyst, Meta's cash flow, so "unrelated to AI" is only half right.

Brent at $116.72 is the highest close since April, and WTI has risen +17% from its 1-month low of $88.28. If the policy card of releasing reserves is weak, the upside opens further if strikes resume. Comments included the view that the SPR was designed to last until the midterms and the opinion that European winter gas demand will push oil to $150. In stark contrast to energy (XLE +2.60%), airlines and consumer goods are the most vulnerable.

Monetization of this year's roughly $220 billion in capex is the key point to watch in the 10/29 earnings. Comments split between the view that demand is real enough to hit token limits and the counterargument that it is not enough to close the $4 trillion gap between investment and expected revenue. $AMZN jumped from 21st to 5th in mention rankings, but consumer discretionary (XLY), which includes Amazon, fell -1.66% on 10/23. The community's earnings expectations and the share price trend are still out of sync.

This is a warning posted on a thread about household equity allocation hitting a record high. The same concern is evident in Korea. Domestic brokerages have uniformly warned against the use of margin loans, unsettled trades and leveraged ETFs, and the KOSPI, down -21.6% over one month, has already gone through one forced liquidation phase. In the US, the S&P 500 is down only -0.87% over 5 days, so liquidation risk is less priced in.

This argument is used as grounds for predicting an AI bubble collapse. In memory, too, China's CXMT has lifted its DRAM share to 10%, up 6 percentage points in a year, adding pressure in the same direction. The picture is one of low-cost Chinese catch-up in both models and memory shaking the pricing power of Big Tech and Korean chipmakers.

The author calls it "the worst month I can remember" but is holding on without leverage. Citing the precedent of SaaS reclaiming new highs after this year's crash, the author argues that narrative runs ahead of fundamentals.

Top comment consensus: The prevailing interpretation is a macro selloff across high-beta stocks driven by borrowing costs, rate hike odds and high oil prices rather than AI itself. Some say AI valuations have come down to around 20 times forward earnings and that cybersecurity is actually the overvalued area, while others say this is nothing compared with 2008 or 2022.

The post argues AI demand is real, based on Andy Jassy's remark that AWS capacity is largely booked through 2027.

Top comment consensus: The first comment says demand is strong enough to hit token limits when AI is used heavily for work, followed by the rebuttal that it is limited to the tech sector and hard to close a $4 trillion gap. Other comments call Big Tech spending "a survival bet driven by fear of falling behind, not by calculation" and see Meta's lack of capex guidance for next year as a warning sign.

The post asks about the possibility of a crash, citing data showing the share of stocks in household assets at a record high.

Top comment consensus: The leading view is that a crash will come but no one knows when. There are worries that oil and Treasury yields would rise together if the Iran conflict escalates, and warnings that margin borrowing is at a record so a liquidation would accelerate the decline. Counterarguments say automatic 401k purchases and foreign inflows support the market, and others advise long-term investors to hold on.

Amid Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia, Trump's hints at further operations against Iran and the State Department's order to withdraw diplomats from the Middle East, the post notes the SPR is at its lowest since 1982. It sees airline stocks as the most vulnerable.

Top comment consensus: Some forecast that the SPR was designed to last until the midterms and oil will soar afterward, and others say European winter gas inventory demand will push it to $150. An $XOM holder thinks rebuilding Middle East infrastructure will take more than three years. The rest is political debate.

The post lists Fed hikes, surging long-term bond yields, valuation cuts at OpenAI and Anthropic, CoreWeave unsecured bonds yielding 16%, delayed AI IPOs and the fiscal deficit as signals of a top.

Top comment consensus: The first comment dismisses it as "a list without basis," followed by rebuttals such as "this list makes me more bullish," TINA, and arguments based on steady unemployment, corporate earnings and consumer spending. Within a pessimistic feed, the comments lean contrarian bullish.

News that Q3 trading volume of tokenized stocks on BNB Chain reached $25.6 billion.

Top comment consensus: The first comment urges caution, saying weekend liquidity and redemption procedures need to be tested first, followed by criticism questioning how Binance obtained the right to tokenize stocks.

A post from a new buyer noting that Bitcoin dipped below $80,000 for the first time after trading above it for a month.

Jim Paulsen, a strategist with 40 years of experience, diagnosed the market as being in a state of "complacency" rather than overheating. He noted that tech's roughly 20-year outperformance of the S&P 500 is the longest in 100 years and that everyone is overweight tech. The capex sector, about 14% of real GDP, has grown at an annualized 13.7% over six quarters, while the remaining 86% grew only 0.7%, meaning "a boom in a small sector and a recession-like phase in the rest" coexist. He recommended cutting tech and telecom and adding consumer staples, utilities, REITs and healthcare, and warned that surging oil and rates, a strong dollar and falling real wages could make November-April seasonality disappointing and that declines could accelerate after the midterms.

The WSJ showed the USS George Washington carrier strike group in the Arabian Sea taking on large quantities of bunker busters (including GBU-31) and long-range missiles. Its current mission is to blockade Iranian ports and protect shipping in Hormuz, but there are clear signs of preparation for a larger bombing campaign. The war is in its eighth month with poor public opinion, and Trump has said he would not attack Iran before the midterms.

In Nam-sik, a professor at the Korea National Diplomatic Academy, likened the war to being "80% of the way to the summit," but said there is a large crevasse in the last 20%. He saw the October 27 Israeli election and the November 3 US midterms as inflection points, and said the two months after the election, before the new Congress convenes (January 3), will be the most volatile. He said Iran does not trust negotiations and will try to show deterrence through maximum escalation, and that the biggest risk is the war moving "west" to the Red Sea and North Africa as the Houthis and Hezbollah reactivate.

The program said CoreWeave's 5-year CDS has held in the 1,100bp range after peaking at 1,195bp and its unsecured bonds trade in the 15% range, effectively shutting it out of bond issuance. Oracle's CDS has roughly doubled since the start of the year, SoftBank's CDS is at a 4-year high, and SpaceX raised $40 billion at junk-level rates of 7.75-8.3%. The panel discussed whether the shift in funding "from bonds to equity," such as Meta setting up a vehicle to issue non-voting new shares, should be seen as a sign of a peak in the AI cycle. In a separate episode, it described next week, with the FOMC, Big Tech earnings and PCE overlapping, as the most volatile stretch of the year, and noted that hedge fund tech selling is at an extreme, so contrarian indicators point to a bottom.

The program interpreted money leaving AI tech stocks and flowing into US Treasuries, pushing rates down despite rising oil, as a sign of economic slowdown and financial instability. According to LSEG, corporate bond issuance this year by Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Oracle totaled about $228.4 billion through October 20. JPMorgan flagged a possible decline in the 10-year to 4.5-4.75%, and BlackRock suggested high-grade corporate bonds with durations under three years.

Lee Ji-hwan, CEO of Aurora Investment Advisory, said the Korean market's daily swings out of sync with the US indicate a phase just before a direction emerges, and that flows rather than fundamentals are moving the market now. Citing hedge funds' AI allocation falling from 31% to 26% and their long-short ratio from 4:1 to 3:1, he judged that this is not a shift to a downtrend. He advised concentrating chip exposure on Samsung Electronics, which can withstand a worst-case scenario, and holding off on deploying cash until a trend bottom is confirmed or overhead supply is broken.

Summarizing the KOSPI's weekly -3.77% and the KOSDAQ's weekly -7%, he advised focusing on stocks with strong earnings and large orders during the Q3 earnings season. With the KOSPI retesting 5,306 intraday on 10/23, he saw the possibility of a W-shaped double bottom, viewing 5,300-5,250 as the floor and a recovery of 5,550 and a break above 5,700 as signals of expansion. He stressed that whether SK hynix's operating profit exceeds 80 trillion won and its guidance are the keys to a turn in flows.

Commentator Jung Ji-woo said the decision on war with Iran has been pushed back until after the midterms, and the clearer the outcome, the better for the market. Noting that Samsung Electronics and SK hynix trade at 2-3 times next year's earnings and that a KOSPI PBR of 1 corresponds to about 5,100, he called this a range for staggered buying and described the decline driven by expanding Big Tech investment as "a fake crisis." Commentator Gangnam Big Hand argued that falling memory prices could improve hyperscaler profitability and actually rescue AI.

Moon Hong-cheol cited November 15 (the week after the midterms) and the US 10-year touching 4.8% as conditions for the difficult stretch to end. He argued that the talk since late September that "rates are too high and AI is getting hit" reflects a pair trade by macro hedge funds, long Treasuries and short AI, and that the 20bp one-day plunge in rates was short covering. He expects the won-dollar rate has room to fall to 1,320 won but that 1,300 won will hold through year-end.

Researcher Min Kyung-won said exporters' dollar-selling that drove the won-dollar decline since July has mostly been priced in, with support at 1,320 won. He forecast a weaker won in the first half of next year, saying foreign money is heading to Taiwan's TSMC, which is less volatile, and that the main event for French fiscal risk is the April 2027 presidential election.

On October 18, the Houthis fired ballistic missiles and drones at Riyadh, forcing Saudi international airports to close several times. CSIS estimated the US may have used about 65% of its interceptors in five months of the Iran war. With 69% of Americans saying the Iran war is not worth fighting, the program judged a direct US strike on Yemen before the election unlikely, and said the red line is interference with third-country merchant shipping through the Red Sea.

As of September 25, Five Below was up about 18% year to date while Miniso was down about 53%. Miniso's North American revenue rose 37%, but selling and distribution costs rose about 36%, shrinking profit, while Five Below achieved operating leverage with revenue up about 23% and SG&A up about 18%.

The discussion centered on allies no longer seeing the US as a reliable ally and the case for preparing a "sovereign Europe." Applebaum said Democrats winning the House by a margin of 15-20 seats is the minimum condition for change. There was no discussion of market figures.