Oil jumped nearly 2% after Houthi attacks on Riyadh’s international airport and tanker incidents near the Strait of Hormuz. The rise outweighed a Russia-Ukraine energy ceasefire announcement and a Russian diesel supply deal.
Wednesday’s inflation report is the next test for the Fed. Oil is pushing one way. A softer jobs report is pulling the other.
Oil and Jobs Pull the Fed in Different Directions
Brent settled at $106.65 and WTI at $93.74, according to the daily macro digest.
The digest says markets expect September headline inflation of roughly 3.6% to 3.7%, driven by energy. They expect core inflation of roughly 2.4% to 2.5%. If energy pushes the headline number higher, a pause becomes harder to judge.
The jobs figures point the other way. September payrolls rose by just 29,000, and unemployment was 4.2%, according to the digest.
Most Fed officials expect another rate hike by year-end, the digest says, after September’s increase to 3.75% to 4%. A pause at the late-October meeting looks likely if incoming data allow it. Wednesday’s report will help show whether they do.
Stocks closed mixed as chipmakers weakened and oil surged. The Dow gained 0.38%, while the S&P 500 fell 0.06% and the Nasdaq fell 0.44%. The digest called it the lowest-volume equity session of 2026.
AI Spending Faces a Payoff Test
Meta has introduced Muse, a personal agent that can book appointments, fill out forms, and monitor home security feeds. It will have a free tier and monthly plans at $20 or $100, depending on usage. Meta is also exploring a cut of shopping transactions made through the agent, though it has no concrete plan.
Wall Street is pressing Meta to show returns on its AI spending. Mark Zuckerberg has described personal agents as a foundation for future products and revenue. Muse puts a product and a price behind that idea. It does not yet answer how much money the product will make.
There are privacy questions, too. Users must opt out if they do not want their agent interactions used to train Meta’s models. Meta says Muse does not see actual passwords or payment details and asks before sensitive actions. The launch follows Meta’s agreement to pay nearly $17 billion in a settlement with state attorneys general. Related lawsuits remain.
Victor’s case for Micron rests on strong growth and demand for memory. He says revenue grew at triple-digit rates from a year earlier in cloud memory, core data center, mobile and client, and automotive. In the segments he discussed, he says gross margins were above 80% and operating margins were above 70%.
Micron management says demand will stay ahead of supply in 2027 and 2028, with more tightness than in 2026. More than 75% of its 2027 output was already committed. Victor says 26 strategic customer agreements cover over 35% of revenue through 2030. Micron says 75% of those agreements have price floors and ceilings.
Victor’s technical point is that AI processors can be left waiting when memory cannot deliver data fast enough. He says high-bandwidth memory helps close that gap, and Micron’s HBM4E base dies will be designed with customers including Nvidia and AMD.
He cites a Goldman Sachs forecast that AI-agent token use will grow at least 24 times by 2030. A UBS estimate he cites puts annual rack capacity from Nvidia, AMD, and ASIC makers at as much as 105 gigawatts in 2030, up from 26.5 gigawatts in 2026. These are forecasts, not settled demand. Victor says Micron could double over the next several quarters or within two years; his model puts it at around $1,362 per share.
Others disagree about who benefits from all this spending. The speaker at @value-investing says that if most of the planned and committed $5.5 trillion goes into AI, the technology will work, but cheaper and more widely available products will benefit users more than investors or hyperscalers. The speaker at @fundstrat_direct argues that belief in an AI bubble is so widespread that a bubble is unlikely.
AI video offers a check on claims of cheaper production. Eileen VanderVelden told Reuters that current tools can make clips of at most 30 seconds before quality falls apart. For On This Day 1776, @wallstreetmillennial estimates about $140,000 per short episode, or $28,000 per minute, compared with his anime estimate of $12,500 per minute.
Bank Profits, Whirlpool Debt, and Gold
Analysts expect the five largest US investment banks to make $44 billion in third-quarter profits. That would be almost 9% more than a year ago, but about 20% less than in the second quarter. JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, and Citigroup are due to report Tuesday; Bank of America and Morgan Stanley are due Wednesday.
The @value-investing speaker points to Whirlpool’s buybacks, declining revenue, and almost $7 billion of long-term debt. He cites a BB- rating with a negative outlook and new borrowing at 7.5%, compared with 1% and 1.5% on earlier debt. A US housing rebound and lower rates would help, he says. Even so, he sees a bondholder takeover after bankruptcy as more likely than a successful recovery.
He also says gold looks attractive near 4,000, after falling from above 5,000 as higher Treasury rates made bonds more appealing. In his view, lower future rates, a recession, or money printing could lift it to 6,000, 8,000, or 10,000 in the next few years. Those are possible outcomes, not settled prices.
Tariffs and Foreign Policy
President Donald Trump said Bombardier must build in America to sell in the US. Bombardier said it directly employs people in more than 20 states, has sites in 10 states, and uses American-made aircraft components. It also plans a new Fort Wayne facility later this year. Canada was preparing retaliatory tariffs on about $20 billion of US goods.
In a separate foreign policy argument, Marco Rubio said the US chose the “unapologetic pursuit of national power.” Ben Norton of @geopoliticaleconomyreport disputes Rubio’s account of Western civilization. Norton argues that competition over resources, markets, technology, and supply chains drives geopolitical conflict.