Markets this week picked up exactly where it left off last week, and then took us all on a ride … All three major indices continued their four day slide through Tuesday fueled by mounting concern that the tech stocks driving our markets are dramatically overvalued. And then … Nvidia announced its earnings report on Wednesday. CEO Jensen Huang reported that Q3 earnings blew Wall Street projections out of the water. He also offered an extremely sunny forecast for Q4. Huang said that the demand for Nvidia’s current-generation Blackwell chips is “off the charts.” The announcement sent Nvidia’s stock nearly 5% higher on the session and drove a rebound across the markets, with key AI players like AMD and Broadcom also soaring. So to be clear, the markets resolved their fear of AI overvaluation by further inflating the value of AI. For now, it’s Nvidia’s world and the rest of us are just living in it. But the biggest question remains as yet unresolved. Will the reality of AI match the hype and justify the investment?Clearly, even in light of Nvidia’s robust year-ending outlook, investors are undecided on this question. Markets seesawed dramatically on Friday, cratering in the early part of trading before clawing back some of their losses by midday.Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve is doing little to ward off this volatility. To wit, we have no idea what the Fed plans to do with interest rates in December. In fact, the Fed has no idea what the Fed plans to do with interest rates in December. Wednesday saw the release of minutes from the October meeting of the Federal Open Markets Committee (FOMC). These minutes revealed sharp disagreement within the Fed about which is the bigger threat to our economy – a stagnant job market or persistent inflation.It can totally be both. Of course, it’s kind of hard to say which is worse at the moment because we’re only just now emerging from a 6-week federal data drought. This Thursday, we finally got a peak at the delayed job numbers from September. They were better than expected. In August, the labor economy contracted by 4,000 jobs. President Trump responded by firing the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That seemed to work. According to yesterday’s jobs report, the labor economy added 119,000 new jobs in September. On the down side, the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.4%, its highest rate since October of 2021. Either way, this information is only marginally useful. Why? Because…Ok. Maybe that’s an exaggeration. But it was 44 days. That’s how long the government was shuttered. September’s labor numbers simply don’t reflect our post-shutdown reality. And even before 1.4 million federal workers endured 6 weeks without pay, the Fed was clearly divided on what it might do in December. According to the October minutes, “In discussing the near-term course of monetary policy, participants expressed strongly differing views about what policy decision would most likely be appropriate.” That October meeting ultimately yielded a 25 basis point cut, bringing the current borrowing rate to 3.75-4.00%. But even this decision was a contentious one. The Committee was divided between those who agreed with the rate cut, those who disagreed with it, and those who thought it should be twice the size. This kind of internal disunity puts Chair Jerome Powell in a tough spot.This disunity is also unusual within the FOMC. Historically, dissent has been reserved for internal discussion. In public, the Fed typically exhibits a philosophical consensus about its mandate and a practical consensus about how to achieve that mandate. Some would argue that its credibility, stability, and independence rely on this consensus. To an extent, the path to consensus has been clouded by the government’s 44-day data hiatus. And it won’t get much better in the near term. On Friday we learned that the October CPI has been canceled due to a lack of data, and the November inflation metric will be delayed until after the Fed’s December meetings. Naturally, everyday Americans don’t need this type of data to measure inflation. We’ve all been to the grocery store. Of course, it’s a bit trickier to work without exact numbers when you're making monetary policy. Chair Powell recently likened it to “driving in a fog.” Fellow Committee member Christopher Waller said it wasn’t like driving in a fog. Clearly, the division at the Fed goes deeper than its immediate disagreements over which levers to pull. Waller is part of a group within the Committee that favors more aggressive rate cuts as a way to juice the labor market. Another contingent of the Committee fears that any additional cuts at the moment would cause inflation to spikeAnd then there’s Powell, whose term as Chair ends in May. In the meantime, all eyes will be on the Committee as they gather for their next set of meetings on December 17th with the shared aim of answering one single question…

I've been doing some pattern watching on a myriad of stocks relating to the GME swap theory over the years. A few of these guys were meme stocks, but others just stocks following a pattern. Some of em, PLUG, NIO, BYND, I've invested for short term plays. The thing that made me write this post is that one of the knife catchers of my list $BNKK has been following the same pattern but with a massive volume. I noticed it a couple weeks back because it's 5 year chart and its 1 year chart are almost identical on robinghood. Its a penny stock that has, as far as I can tell, never had 250 Million volume. It was at $.25 pre market today, and looks like its going to run with the rest of my list. I presume it'll do what they all do and follow a steady run up for like 8-10 days then get shorted back down. I was tracking a NIO run that burned the hell out of me in October due to a Trump tarriff announcement, so don't take this as trading advice. Just noticing that an algo I follow is working very hard to suppress this 8 employee de-lister. If anything crazy happens, I'll post a follow up. Just know that big bullish moves my be coming

Anyone have any news on the progress of those "milestones" that are supposed to be achieved? I'm guessing mid 2026 if anything.