Outpacing ChatGPT. 🥛 Muse takes the top spot 🥇 Outpacing ChatGPT. Chevy Cassar GM. This is Milk Road Stocks, your daily market briefing without the guy in the suspenders yelling at you. Today we’re updating you on everything you might have missed with Meta’s Muse - the AI agent that looks like it could be shaping up to be the company’s biggest home-grown hit since Facebook. First, a quick detour. Milk Road’s audience doesn’t just follow markets. They obsess over them. 👉 Partner with Milk Road MUSE JUST TOOK THE TOP SPOT 🥇 Two weeks ago we covered Meta launching Muse, a personal AI agent that works on your behalf to book your travel, fill out your forms and buy your stuff. Back then it had cracked the App Store top 5 in a day, and META was up 5% premarket. Since then, things have escalated. Muse started at #78 on the U.S. App Store on Sep 9. Eleven days later it was sitting at #1 on both the App Store and Google Play - having pulled in more downloads in its first 12 days than ChatGPT saw in its first 12 days after launch. 👇 Source: Appfigures On the way up it passed ChatGPT, Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp and Threads. And Sensor Tower (an app analytics firm) says people are sticking around: 730K U.S. downloads in the first ten days, a record 264K on Sep 19 alone, and 448K people opening it every single day, by day ten. What's been landing on our timeline is what those people are actually doing with it. Singularity Research pulled together 100 user reports of Muse running errands and cutting bills. The combined tally was $9,649.71 saved across 129 errands. One person knocked $3,500 off their car insurance after Muse found an identical policy somewhere cheaper. And when Ejaaz's Delta flight to Maui got delayed seven hours, he handed the whole mess over to Muse while he was sitting at the gate. Five minutes later his flight was rebooked and he had a $250 flight credit. Meta's even rumored to be building Muse its own mailbox. TestingCatalog dug up an unreleased Mail tab in the web app that would give Muse its own email address instead of borrowing yours. None of which makes it the winner yet… ChatGPT still pulled roughly 3.6M U.S. downloads over the same twelve day period (Sep 8-19) that Muse managed 2.5M. And Muse is U.S.-only so far. Source: Sensor Tower What moved the stock is that Meta can finally charge for this kind of thing. Muse is free at the base level, with plans at $20 and $100 a month above it. And on Sep 15 Meta rolled out Meta One globally, bundling paid features across Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp and Meta AI from $7.99 up to $499 for businesses. (It's already got 15M subscriptions and trials.) Oppenheimer ran the numbers on where this could go. If Muse eventually reaches the 1.91B users across Meta's apps and 6% of them pay, you're looking at ~115M subscribers and roughly $27.5B a year. Aggressive? Sure. But six months ago the conversation was about how much money Zuck was burning. Today it's about how much that spending brings back. And Wall Street has come around fast. JPMorgan upgraded META on Sep 10 and lifted its target from $640 to $820 (the same folks that downgraded the stock back in April), Wells Fargo went to $796 on Monday, and KeyBanc sits at $780. The stock closed Monday up 11.4% at $741, its biggest day since April 2025. Source: TradingView Not everyone's rolling out the welcome mat, mind you. Amazon locked Muse out of its store on Sep 20, saying the agent doesn't identify itself while browsing and appears to hang onto customer login details. Meta says Muse can't see passwords or payment methods. The next morning Shopify announced the exact opposite: agentic checkout with Shop Pay across every Shopify store. Which makes sense when you look at what each of them sells. Amazon owns the place you start shopping, so an agent standing in front of it is a threat. Shopify just powers the checkout, so it doesn't care who sends the customer over. I.e. Whether these agents work at all comes down to who lets them in. Which brings us to today. Meta Connect kicks off with Zuckerberg on the keynote, and there are three things we’ll be keeping an eye out for: Meta's own usage numbers for Muse (everything so far has been third-party estimates). A closer look at how Muse shows up inside the glasses . Whether more retailers pick Shopify's side over Amazon's. Btw - Melvin (one of our PRO analysts) holds Meta and posted his full breakdown of where he thinks Muse goes from here inside PRO on Monday. If you want to see it, you can try Milk Road PRO for a buck for 7 days . GET YOUR BRAND IN FRONT OF 500K+ INVESTORS Milk Road’s audience doesn’t just follow markets. They obsess over them. Every day, hundreds of thousands of investors come to Milk Road to discover new companies, understand new products, find new investment ideas, and stay ahead of what’s happening across crypto, stocks, AI and finance. And they want to hear about what you’re building. Milk Road gives brands a direct line to that audience across: 500K+ followers and subscribers 35M+ monthly content impressions 400K+ monthly podcast views and listens 187K unique monthly newsletter readers 4,200+ paying Milk Road PRO members Whether you’re launching a new product, introducing your company to investors, or just want more people talking about your brand, we’ll help you get it in front of an audience that’s actually interested. 👉 Partner with Milk Road Know a company that belongs in front of the Milk Road audience? Send this their way. This content is for educational purposes only. Read full disclaimer Interested in reaching smart readers like you? 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Tax-loss harvesting isn't just an equity strategy. September 23, 2026 PRESENTED BY Good morning. Many advisors will have met the client whose portfolio is held together by one very successful holding. Maybe he collected shares as payment for a decade, maybe she bought in early and never found a reason to sell, maybe the stock came down through the family with a rule attached about never selling it. Trouble is, the position kept appreciating until it dwarfed everything else in the portfolio, so now the whole plan rides on whatever happens at a single company (one earnings call away from a rewritten plan). Liquidating would fix the concentration, but it also triggers a tax bill that can reach 35% in high tax states, even at long-term rates (a third of the gain, gone to the IRS). So the position needs to come down in pieces instead, at a speed the client can stomach and a tax cost they’ll accept. And this is just one version of a problem advisors are meeting across the board: getting a portfolio where it needs to go without handing over more tax than necessary. Manju Boraiah, Global Head of Systematic Fixed Income and Custom SMA at Allspring Global Investments, says the answer runs across the whole portfolio, bonds included, and doesn’t depend on which way markets are going. Here are the highlights from our conversation with Manju at Future Proof Festival 2026. PRESENTED BY ALLSPRING GLOBAL INVESTMENTS Too Many Portfolios Are Leaving Tax On The Table Photo via Damon Butler The Daily Upside: How should advisors think about clients with concentrated stock positions? Concentrated stock exposure is one of the biggest challenges and opportunities in the US wealth space right now. Total US household wealth is around $91 trillion, and roughly $49 trillion of that sits with high net worth investors. Some estimates put the concentrated portion of that between $5 trillion and $11 trillion. That’s a massive pool of assets sitting in one or two stocks, or a handful. The challenge for advisors is minimizing the downside risk, because when a portfolio is concentrated, the entire financial plan is exposed to single stock volatility. You can’t simply liquidate, because that triggers a huge tax bill, as high as 35% in high tax states even with the long-term gains rate. The solution is diversifying gradually, over a multi-year transition plan with guardrails around it. The Daily Upside: Direct indexing has become a go-to strategy here, but results vary. What should advisors know? I think about direct indexing as a spectrum of solutions. There’s long-only direct indexing, long-short equity SMAs, and option overlays. Direct indexing is the more elegant solution for diversifying that exposure, and it allows for a flexible plan. We run transition plan analysis for single stock exposures, which gives advisors a glide path and helps them understand the pros and cons of liquidating versus moving into a diversified portfolio over time. You can also run scenario analysis, which helps advisors work out the right glide path for a particular client. The Daily Upside: How do advisors balance tax savings against staying close to an index? There are two things to balance: the tax cost you realize when you liquidate a portion of the stock, and how closely you track the index, which you measure through tracking error. You’re looking at an efficient frontier, minimizing tax cost while minimizing tracking error. That frontier is different for every portfolio, so mapping it is the starting point. From there it comes down to the client’s objectives and timeframe. A client who wants to be aggressive can carry a higher tax budget and diversify more quickly, but will realize higher tax costs doing it. A more conservative client with a longer timeframe can set tight guardrails around tax cost and work through it methodically over a multi-year horizon. Balancing the two is the secret sauce. The Daily Upside: After an extended bull market, what are the other opportunities for tax loss harvesting? Market direction and the opportunity to harvest losses are largely disconnected, in my view. What drives tax loss harvesting is individual stock dispersion. Whether markets are trending up or down, there’s always a portion of stocks underperforming and a portion outperforming, and that dispersion ebbs and flows over time. As dispersion moves, the opportunity to harvest moves with it. That’s why tax loss harvesting is an all-weather strategy. You can apply it in any market condition. The Daily Upside: If the goal is to track a benchmark, how does a provider differentiate? It comes down to execution. The tax-aware transition plan is part of it, so having better structure and flexibility there is where we start. The second piece is the nimbleness to put that plan to work: rebalancing portfolios daily, optimizing, and looking for opportunities to harvest losses. Build, execute, and track. Those are the three things we do really well. The Daily Upside: Advisors may assume this is equity-specific. What’s possible on the fixed income side? The threshold on the bond side is slightly higher, because bonds aren’t easy. There are transaction costs, there’s friction, and there’s the availability challenge. But you can still apply the strategy systematically. At Allspring we were one of the first adopters of tax loss harvesting in the bond space, starting with munis, and then applied it to taxable fixed income. In a typical 60/40 portfolio, 40% sits in fixed income, so you need the ability to apply tax efficiency across the whole portfolio. The tax alpha opportunity in fixed income is minimal, but it exists, and applying tax efficiency across both equity and fixed income is quintessential for advisors. The Daily Upside: What’s the one thing advisors should take away, and what should they be asking providers? Two things: the consistency of the investment process, and its flexibility. Can a provider apply the same process across different account sizes and

Plus: Diesel destinations | Wednesday, September 23, 2026 Axios Markets By Emily Peck and Matt Phillips · Sep 23, 2026 🐪 Wednesday. U.S. stock futures are basically flat this morning, after the Nasdaq 100 reached a new all-time high yesterday on renewed AI excitement. 🗓️ Today, Matt unburdens himself of a long-simmering cri de coeur: A trader cannot live on breadth alone. Then Emily has the inside skinny on a new Democratic proposal to boost the buying power of would-be homeowners. And, as the U.S. mulls a diesel export ban, who'd feel it most? We take a look. Shall we? 1,297 words, a 5-minute read. 1 big thing: Reasons to worry about stocks. Or not By Matt Phillips Data: FactSet; Chart: Axios Markets/Matt Phillips Worries about the underlying strength of the stock market — broadly defined as "market breadth" — are popping up again. The big picture: Such nervousness comes as the AI-driven rally nears its fourth anniversary next month. The latest: A post on X from technical analyst Jason Goepfert has recently generated market chatter. He showed that the S&P 500's gain of 1.5% Monday brought it to within 1% of a new all-time high even as the number of its constituents hitting new 52-week lows dwarfed those hitting new 52-week highs. Goepfert says the last time the market saw this particular confluence was Dec. 21, 1999 — not long before the dot-com bubble peaked in March 2000. The only other previous time was in July 1929, he says. What they're saying: "We've never in almost 100 years seen breadth this bad," he said in a separate post. Zoom out: Technical traders and analysts try to divine market signals from changes and patterns in charts rather than sweating the details of sales, profits and economic growth. And they often try to "look under the hood" at the underlying strength of the different stocks that make up indexes like the S&P 500. Yes, but: There is little solid evidence that a deterioration of "market breadth" has any predictive power when it comes to ringing the alarm about market crashes. Goepfert came up with one measure of "market breadth." But there are plenty of others, including the net share of S&P 500 stocks that are above their 200-day moving average, which I've charted above. As you can see, it has weakened recently, but it's not at particularly acute levels. It's basically meandering around as it always does. The other side: Does that mean things are absolutely fine and the market is sure to keep rising? Of course not. I have no idea. Nobody does. That said, there are some other indicators that academic research has shown to have at least a bit of predictive power as market harbingers. Zoom in: These indicators include: A major boom in bond market borrowing — check. Bond market activity has surged as hyperscalers and the companies they're backstopping borrow big to build AI data centers. A boom in the issuance of new shares of stock — check. Equity issuance exploded earlier this year , with the SpaceX IPO and share sales by market giants like Alphabet . Extreme valuations — well, maybe. It depends what measure you're using. The so-called Cyclically Adjusted Price-to-Earnings ratio — which normalizes earnings over the previous decade — is at nosebleed levels . (But it has also been at nosebleed levels for most of the last decade.) On the other hand, the plain vanilla forward price-to-earnings ratio for the S&P doesn't look too egregious at under 20, at least not by recent standards. At the same time, price-to-sales ratios are off-the-charts high and at extreme levels not even seen during the dot-com bubble. So, take your pick. Between the lines: While we don't put much faith in the predictive powers of technical analysis — also known as astrology for men — it can be interesting to note when market movements generate attention as "red flags." Back in the early 2010s, the so-called Hindenburg Omen was supposedly a signal to sell everything. (Spoiler: It wasn't. The market did tremendously well for years after.) The bottom line: Maybe that's the lesson. Perhaps sensitivity to such headlines shows how nervous investors are when looking at a bull market that seems to defy gravity. But is that a bad thing, suggesting they're on the verge of dumping shares at the next sign of a blaring red headline? Or is it a good thing, suggesting that there is still enough worry out there to provide the proverbial "wall" stocks supposedly love to climb? Again, take your pick. 2. A proposal to juice up homebuying By Emily Peck Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios First-time homebuyers could get as much as $50,000 for a down payment on a house, under a draft bill to be introduced today by Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and cosponsored by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.). Why it matters: It's a big number and comes as the real estate market is beset by multiple woes, including rising mortgage rates pricing buyers out of the market. Zoom out: Congress passed a landmark bipartisan housing bill earlier this year. But that law came with no dollars attached and was mostly focused on encouraging more home building. Just giving people money for down payments could encourage more home buying. Reality check: While this bill likely won't go anywhere in a Republican-controlled Senate and House, it is a hint at where Democrats might be moving if they regain control of Congress after the midterms. And housing has proven a popular cause for both parties. How it works: The Homeownership Promise Act would give any eligible first-time homebuyer who saves money for a down payment and meets some other requirements a 5-to-1 federal match. Zoom in: For each dollar a person saves, the federal government would contribute $5 up to a total limit of $50,000. So someone who saves $10,000 would have a total of $60,000 for a down payment. Employers and nonprofits can also make contributions on an individual's behalf — but that money would not be matched. There's no income limit on getting the match. But buyers would be limited to home

Plus: Alibaba is hyper-focused on becoming a hyperscaler. September 23, 2026 PRESENTED BY PLANCORP WEALTH MANAGEMENT Good morning. Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz is investing $35 million in a new private, tuition-free “academy” for high school graduates. The San Francisco-based Horowitz Andreessen Academy, while described as a “highly selective school” that will train young talent for the tech and AI industries, will not initially offer any degrees or accreditation. “College is a good option for the majority of students, but we believe a select few will find that The Academy is better at preparing them for the real world,” its FAQ page says. The founding class’s one-year program will offer students “co-ops,” essentially a series of internships at top tech firms, as well as courses taught by experienced Silicon Valley professionals on “practical subjects” including “founder-led sales” and “leading high-ownership cultures.” Most of their time, though, will be spent on self-directed work, with experts, instructors and their peers offering regular feedback. Andreessen Horowitz said students can also expect visits and guest lectures from the likes of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Uber cofounder Travis Kalanick. Tuition may be free, but students are expected to pay for their own housing. Rent in San Francisco? Suddenly that applied science associate degree at Northern Virginia Community College sounds just fine. MARKETS S&P 500 7,764.64 ▼ -0.001% DJI 51,863.69 ▼ -0.36% VKTX $40.85 ▲ +35.67% Stock data as of market close on September 22, 2026. BANKING Goldman Leads Bidding for $37 Billion Palmer Square, a CLO Powerhouse A major player on Wall Street may be CLOsing in on CLOs. Goldman Sachs is the lead bidder to buy Kansas-based Palmer Square Capital Management, a collateralized loan obligation powerhouse overseeing $37 billion, Bloomberg reported Tuesday. While a deal may not be reached, the talks illustrate Goldman’s continued efforts to expand its footprint in the alternative credit markets, and an opportunity to beat alt heavyweights like Apollo at their own game. CLOs to You CLOs are pools of floating-rate loans, often below investment grade, that allow investors to potentially net higher-than-average returns in exchange for taking on greater default risk. It’s no wonder they’re appealing to investors (and alts managers): They can provide double-digit returns in today’s 5% rate environment, and the structures are designed to limit risk, in part through diversification. “In a market environment shaped by inflation uncertainty and evolving monetary policy, CLOs represent a distinct segment of the fixed income landscape,” Fidelity portfolio managers wrote in a white paper earlier this year. “Their floating-rate nature, diversified underlying collateral, and layered structural protections have historically supported income generation with limited interest rate sensitivity.” An analysis from VanEck also found that they’ve typically been able to weather market downturns better than high-yield and corporate bonds. Goldman would not only be buying Palmer Square when its main product is in high demand, but also amid a private credit liquidity squeeze. It’s a move that would allow the bank to expand its credit and alts offering outside of traditional banking, and ramp up its competition with other alternative asset managers: In March, Blackstone’s flagship private credit fund BCRED sold a roughly $450 million CLO deal. (That came after the company appointed a new head of CLOs at the end of last year.) The month before, Ares Management reportedly priced a second European CLO. Also in March, Apollo secured a new credit line that Bloomberg said could bring funding to Apollo’s debt arm to originate or buy new loans; such financing can come just ahead of issuing a CLO. Its previous deal had been a roughly $700 million CLO issued around this time last year, the outlet reported. Massive Market: Just how big is the market Goldman is eyeing? Another VanEck analysis said that the global CLO market hit $1 trillion in 2021 and is now roughly the size of the US high-yield bond market. Retail investors want in, too. There are more than $10 billion in CLO assets across ETFs, the report added. Written by Mallika Mitra PRESENTED BY PLANCORP WEALTH MANAGEMENT The Best Portfolio Is the One You Can Stick With Photo via Plancorp Wealth Management With predictions, hot takes and stock tips circling news feeds from cable to your group chat, the temptation to flood your portfolio with bets on the next winner is stronger than ever. After two decades helping investors navigate markets (come bear or bull), Peter Lazaroff, Chief Investment Officer at Plancorp Wealth Management and host of The Long-Term Investor , believes in a more disciplined approach. In his new book, The Perfect Portfolio , Lazaroff outlines a practical, evidence-based method for building an investment strategy you can understand and maintain through every market cycle. You’ll learn to use diversification, sensible rules, and behavioral guardrails to make better decisions when uncertainty runs high. Put down that crystal ball and start building a portfolio that fits your goals, your temperament, and the life your money is meant to support. Order your copy. * HEALTHCARE Viking Therapeutics Soars as Weight-Loss Drug Trial Addresses GLP-1 Weakness Photo via IMAGO/Ulrich Roth/Newscom Leave it to a viking to take on two jötnar, as giants were called in Old Norse. The GLP-1 drug market radically transformed the way healthcare providers treat obesity, unlocking billions in revenue for a market now dominated by Novo’s Wegovy and Eli Lilly’s Zepbound. On Tuesday, San Diego-based Viking Therapeutics showed it’s a potential contender, too, releasing new data demonstrating that its experimental GLP-1 treatment VK2735 may address one of the medication class’s shortcomings: adherence rates. Its stock surged 35.67%. A Dose of Less India

The Machine-Native Economy Is No Longer a Research Note BlackRock Just Made Crypto the Settlement Layer for AI(Must Read) The Machine-Native Economy Is No Longer a Research Note Sep 23 READ IN APP None of this is financial advice. Do your own research. By reading this newsletter, you acknowledge and accept the terms and conditions outlined in our disclaimer . GM Investors BlackRock’s machine-native economy framework and SEC tokenization exemptions are forcing an aggressive institutional bid. Bitcoin ripped 6.4% to $87,350 as spot absorption overwhelmed systemic short positioning. Equities followed, adding $450 billion in market cap across the Nasdaq 100. Crude oil plummeted 4.2%, dragging WTI below $68.40 and providing duration relief to risk assets. This crypto market analysis indicates a clear regime shift. Macro trading desks are aggressively rotating out of defensive energy positioning into high-beta technology. Semiconductor stocks printed fresh monthly highs as geopolitical risk premiums dissolved. Total crypto market capitalization rapidly eclipsed the $3.2 trillion threshold. Our order flow models detect a massive divergence from retail-led rallies. This impulse is entirely institutional, driven by sovereign positioning and algorithmic block trading. Here’s what our desk is watching. This Is The Only "Buy The Dip" That Matters In September. TOKEN2049 ticket prices go up Sept 23. The discount code expires with your window. You wouldn't fade a 10% discount on a trade. Don't fade it on the one conference where Vitalik, CZ, and BlackRock share the same stage. $539 with code CRYPTOBANTER. Sept 23 is your cutoff. GET 10% discount and register BlackRock’s Case Is Infrastructure, Not a Trade The paper is eleven pages and unusually blunt for BlackRock. AI agents plan and execute multi-step work with limited human input. They need rails that settle in tiny amounts, around the clock, without a bank officer. Legacy finance cannot price that. Cards and ACH require a human to onboard the payer. Fees kill sub-cent payments. Agents do not wait for T+1. BlackRock’s analogy is the part that will travel. Large language models break language into tokens machines can compute on. Blockchains do the same with value. Cash, ownership, and claims become standardized units. That parallel, the authors write, gives agents a cleaner interface to on-chain assets than to fragmented bank accounts and paperwork. Stablecoins sit at the center. Outstanding supply is already in the hundreds of billions. Adjusted 2025 transfer volume ran near $11 trillion, card-network scale. Growth has been an order of magnitude faster than ACH. USDC now dominates many on-chain settlement flows. That is why Circle’s equity story and Coinbase’s payments stack keep showing up in the same paragraph. The rails are not theoretical. Coinbase, Stripe, OpenAI, Google, and Visa have shipped agent payment standards. BlackRock names x402 by name. The protocol reuses HTTP 402, “Payment Required,” so a machine can pay for an API call in USDC without opening an account. Compute is the next claim. Cloud spend is heading toward $1.1 trillion by 2030. Claims on GPU capacity can be tokenized, pledged, and settled. Agents that buy inference will need a market that looks like that. This is why our crypto market analysis has shifted from “will institutions buy Bitcoin” to “will institutions need blockspace.” Every agent payment burns validator services. Scale the agents and you scale demand for stablecoins and the native assets securing the chains. Bitcoin remains the reserve asset in that stack. The growth engine is the settlement layer underneath it. Washington Just Opened the Tokenization Door The timing of the paper is not an accident. Last week the SEC issued a five-year “Innovation Exemption” for tokenized NMS stocks. Tokenized Securities Venues can now run permissioned automated market makers on public ledgers. Liquidity providers get dealer relief for that activity. CFTC Chairman Michael Selig struck the same note on Tuesday at the New York Fed. He said US markets must prepare for “mass tokenization” as blockchains and AI are adopted at scale. He wants more stablecoin collateral in derivatives markets. He is cautious on blanket 24/7 trading for every commodity. That pairing matters for macro trading. The Fed just hiked 25 basis points to 3.75%–4.00%. Bitcoin still rallied. Our research reads that as a change in what the market is discounting. Rate path still matters. The new bid is structural. Tokenized stocks, tokenized collateral, and agent payments are being written into US market plumbing while Congress stalls. Bitcoin: holds $86,000 after a $87,300 high; $84,000–$85,000 is first support, $87,500 is first resistance. Spot ETFs: $999 million net inflow on Monday; IBIT led. Four-session haul near $2 billion. Leverage: perpetual open interest near $160 billion. Funding and OI running ahead of spot is the pullback risk. x402: 188 million cumulative settlements, about $42 million in tracked USD volume; Base still the largest chain by count. Aerodrome: $13.3 billion DEX volume over 30 days, core liquidity on Base. Equities tape: COIN is the listed agent-rail proxy. CRCL is the listed stablecoin proxy. Semiconductor stocks remain the AI capex proxy. On-chain data still shows agent commerce as early. TRM screened x402 flows and found most volume is not cleanly agentic. That does not kill the thesis. It tells you the infrastructure is live before the customer mix is mature. That is how rails look at the start. 25,000 People. One Building. 48 Hours. Zero Excuses. TOKEN2049 Singapore is where the next cycle’s partnerships get signed. If You’re Not At Marina Bay Sands Oct 7–8, You’re Reading The Recaps. Two Weeks To Lock $539 Entry To The Biggest Crypto Room Of The Year. Use code CRYPTOBANTER at checkout for 10% off the $599 . ETF Creations vs. Altcoin Dilution Spot ETFs absorbed $998.95M yesterday, led decisively by IBIT’s $381.4M single-day print. Bl

Policy is hawkish, diplomacy is the swing factor, and the market is buying 🚨5 Key Levels as Crude Stopped Sprinting Policy is hawkish, diplomacy is the swing factor, and the market is buying Sep 23 READ IN APP None of this is financial advice. Do your own research. By reading this newsletter, you acknowledge and accept the terms and conditions outlined in our disclaimer . Hey Traders, The tape is digesting a calmer war premium, not a new shock. Oil is off its highs after Saudi flows restarted and Trump flagged productive Iran talks on the UN sidelines. Yields are quieter than last week’s post-hike spike. Inflation is still the backdrop. It is no longer setting the hour. Bonds and stocks are in a holding pattern after the Fed already delivered its 25 basis-point move. What matters now is whether diplomacy keeps trimming geopolitical risk and whether speakers leave another hike on the table. Equities look mixed, with tech still carrying the leadership and energy lagging the softer crude tape. This is a pause after a risk-on stretch, not a crash and not a clean all-clear. Bitcoin is trading through that stack in the mid-80s after the squeeze, with ether and the broader crypto tape still following. Oil is no longer ripping. The war premium is fading at the margin. The risk bid is not. Here is what we are watching. Poll of the Day ( Presented by Rain Trade ) 🎯 POLL Which level is the ultimate invalidation line for BTC's institutional bid? 🏛️ 📉 50W SMA ($78.2K) 🧱 ETF Shelf ($82.2K) ⚖️ True Mean ($76.7K) Today’s Charts: Chart #1 – Lighter(LITUSDT) 4-Hour Chart #2 – Cosmos(ATOMUSDT) 1-Day Chart #3 – Aptos(APTUSDT) 4-Hour Chart #4 – Pi Network(PIUSDT) 1-Day Chart #5 – Hims & Hers Health(HIMS) 1-Day This Is The Only “Buy The Dip” That Matters In September. TOKEN2049 ticket prices go up Sept 23. The discount code expires with your window. You wouldn’t fade a 10% discount on a trade. Don’t fade it on the one conference where Vitalik, CZ, and BlackRock share the same stage. $539 with code CRYPTOBANTER. Sept 23 is your cutoff. GET 10% discount and register Chart #1 – Lighter(LITUSDT) 4-Hour( Powered by Rain Trade 📊) Chartist: Kapoor (For the chart screenshot, ) Lighter has printed a rejection wick into overhead range resistance, failing to accept above local liquidity and turning lower near $5.1062 on the 4-hour timeframe. Operating as a high-performance decentralized order book exchange protocol, Lighter provides ultra-low latency trading, non-custodial perpetual contracts, and on-chain liquidity infrastructure powered by verifiable zero-knowledge proofs and high-throughput matching engines. This short trade setup targets an extended mean-reversion drop toward the $4.5200–$4.5500 liquidity shelf as long as overhead resistance caps relief bounces below the $5.1500–$5.4000 zone. Entry: $5.15 Stop Loss: $5.40 Take Profit Levels (TP): TP1: $4.83 TP2: $4.53 Powerful narratives create powerful moves. With 247 Research , you get the insights to be early to the biggest trends in crypto. Chart #2 – Cosmos(ATOMUSDT) 1-Day( Powered by Rain Trade ) Chartist: Kapoor (For the chart screenshot, ) Cosmos has established a steady bullish continuation off its higher-low support retest, holding firm above the $1.626 horizontal pivot to trade near $1.816 on the daily timeframe. Positioned as the foundational "Internet of Blockchains," Cosmos provides interoperability infrastructure through the Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol, the Cosmos SDK framework, and CometBFT consensus, enabling sovereign, app-specific blockchains to securely communicate and transfer liquidity with the Cosmos Hub. This long trade setup targets an upward expansion toward the $2.430 overhead resistance target as long as the $1.366–$1.626 support base holds. Trade Levels: Entry: $1.62 Stop Loss: $1.36 Take Profit Levels (TP): TP1: $2.001 TP2: $2.430 Chart #3 – Aptos(APTUSDT) 4-Hour( Powered by Rain Trade 📊) Chartist: Kapoor (For the chart screenshot, ) Aptos has established a strong bullish impulse following an extended uptrend expansion, breaking above its intermediate resistance shelf to retest the $0.7800 horizontal pivot and trade near $0.8273 on the 4-hour timeframe. Developed by former Meta engineers, Aptos is a high-throughput Layer-1 proof-of-stake blockchain utilizing the Move programming language and the Block-STM parallel execution engine, designed to deliver enterprise-grade scalability, upgradeability, and sub-second transaction finality for decentralized applications. This long trade setup targets an upward expansion toward the $0.9447 overhead resistance target as long as the $0.7253–$0.7800 support base holds. Trade Levels: Entry: $0.78 Stop Loss: $0.72 Take Profit Levels (TP): TP1: $0.86 TP2: $0.94 25,000 People. One Building. 48 Hours. Zero Excuses. TOKEN2049 Singapore is where the next cycle’s partnerships get signed. If You’re Not At Marina Bay Sands Oct 7–8, You’re Reading The Recaps. Two Weeks To Lock $539 Entry To The Biggest Crypto Room Of The Year. Use code CRYPTOBANTER at checkout for 10% off the $599 . Chart #4 – Pi Network(PIUSDT) 1-Day( Powered by Rain Trade 📊) Chartist: Kapoor (For the chart screenshot, ) Pi Network has initiated an impulsive recovery bounce following a successful sweep of its summer accumulation low, reclaiming the $0.0867 horizontal pivot to trade near $0.0913 on the daily timeframe. Designed as an accessible, mobile-first cryptocurrency network powered by the Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP), Pi Network enables users to mine and validate transactions directly from handheld devices without intensive energy consumption, building an inclusive peer-to-peer ecosystem and decentralized application economy. This long trade setup targets an upward expansion toward the $0.1191 overhead resistance target as long as the $0.0779–$0.0867 support base holds. Trade Levels: Entry: $0.086 Stop Loss: $0.077 Take Profit Levels (TP): TP1: $0.101 TP2: $0.119 Markets go both ways. Get premium short setups deli

Princeton loses top spot in US college rankings... September 23, 2026 Presented By Come on in, guys. If you want to understand the secrets of longevity, skip Bryan Johnson and learn from Jeff Probst: Survivor returns for Season 51 tonight. Having aired its first episode all the way back in 2000, the show is older than Wikipedia, the iPod, and The Elf on the Shelf . Think about this: Sadie Sink has never known a world without Survivor . —Sam Klebanov, Molly Liebergall, Dave Lozo, Adam Epstein, Neal Freyman In today’s newsletter, we’ll get into: Princeton’s reign as the top US college ending Peloton’s pivot to treadmills The Great Iced Coffee Debate of 2026 Markets Nasdaq 27,244.28 +0.45% S&P 7,764.64 -0.00% Dow 51,863.69 -0.36% 10-Year 4.968% -- bps Bitcoin $86,237.98 -0.85% Shopify $147.74 +7.12% Data is provided by *Stock data as of market close, cryptocurrency data as of 4:30pm ET. Here's what these numbers mean. Markets: Stocks were a mixed bag yesterday, with the S&P 500 finishing flat and the Nasdaq and Dow moving in opposite directions as investors tried to parse *gestures wildly at everything*. One thing that was clear was that Shopify had a good day after it said it would allow Meta’s Muse AI agent to make purchases on users’ behalf. Orange sunset MIT steals Princeton’s crown in US News rankings Illustration: Morning Brew Inc., Photo: Adobe Stock Will Hunting’s employer unseated the institution where Albert Einstein worked as America’s top college. MIT rose to first, while Princeton—which had held the No. 1 spot since 2012— dropped to second place in the 2027 ranking of national universities by US News & World Report. Since 1983, US News has put out the list that your mom inevitably texts you about every year by combining various criteria to rank colleges: This year, MIT got top marks on faculty research, the newly added category of earnings after graduation, and standardized test scores. Princeton’s score was roughly unchanged, but its lead over rivals narrowed after US News added faculty research metrics in 2023, the publication told the New York Times. Meanwhile, Harvard and Yale maintained third and fourth place, respectively. UC Berkeley and UCLA were the highest-ranked public universities on the list, tying for 20th place with Notre Dame overall. Does anyone care about what US News thinks? Colleges have criticized the publication for reducing a college’s reputation to a single number and for its ranking methodology like its use of reviews by administrators at rival schools. (Princeton urged students and parents not to obsess over the pecking order in 2021.) The ranking arguably doesn’t have the same hold over the minds of high school upperclassmen as it once did, given that AI chatbots can now provide a granular rundown of a school’s strengths and weaknesses. But schools still have a symbiotic relationship with US News: They rely on the rankings to market themselves to potential students and begrudgingly supply the publication with data. Meanwhile, the company makes millions licensing branded badges of the rankings to universities, which they tout to students. Colleges have other top-ranking concerns… as they deal with projections of lower enrollments, declining public trust, doubts about the value degrees deliver amid AI disrupting the job market, and cutbacks in federal funding. Yesterday, Cornell faculty recommended that universities deal with the higher education crisis by altering tuition structure, emphasizing faculty research quality over quantity, and shifting to teaching students human judgment. —SK Sponsored By Rivian Look under the hood Automobiles have come a long way from “horseless carriages.” These days, vehicles are built with such advanced technology, they can actually evolve and get better as new software updates are added over time. At least, that’s how it works with Rivian. Rivian’s all-electric, software-defined lineup of vehicles includes trucks, three-row SUVs, and a new five-seat SUV. They have up to 420 miles of EPA-estimated range and a NACS charge port so you can charge in more places. Curious how all that translates when you’re behind the wheel? Find out by heading to your local Rivian space for a demo drive . World Tour de headlines Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images 🌎 Trump threatens to “annihilate” Iran in address to UN. In an address to the United Nations General Assembly in New York yesterday, President Trump defended the Iran war, while simultaneously threatening to increase military action and labeling himself a peacemaker. “Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival?” he said. He also defended the US’ intervention in Venezuela and said “freedom will be coming to Cuba,” causing the country’s delegation to walk out of the room. Trump later shifted to AI, rejecting widespread calls to place guardrails on the technology and declaring that AI will be renamed “super intelligence” in official US documents. 🎮 Xbox reset continues with major restructuring. The struggling Microsoft-owned gaming company announced yesterday that it’s laying off another 268 employees and moving development of the next Halo game to Call of Duty maker Activision, which Microsoft purchased for $69 billion in 2023. The changes are part of Xbox’s ongoing “reset,” which Chief Content Officer Matt Booty said is designed to strengthen its franchises. Xbox ultimately plans to cut up to 3,200 workers in hopes of improving its underwhelming margins. ⌚ Report: Apple is developing a screenless fitness tracker. According to Bloomberg, the iPhone maker is building prototypes of a screenless health and fitness wristband, similar to Whoop’s flagship product. Apple isn’t sure if it will release the product, and if it does, it likely wouldn’t be before 2028, Bloomberg reported. Still, the news marks a significant shift in Apple’s wearables strategy as it considers the growing threat of fitness competitors like Whoop, Oura, Garmin, and Google-owned Fitbit. —AE WORKING OUT SOME KI

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A fourth straight 0.3% reading bends the inflation window. 🥛 One CPI print away from real pressure 🚨 A fourth straight 0.3% reading bends the inflation window. John Gillen GM. This is Milk Road, the newsletter that helps make sense of macro every Tuesday so you can be a well-informed degen the rest of the week. Here’s what we’ve got for you today: ✍️ The road back to risk on 🎙️ The Milk Road Show: When AI Agents Control Billions in Crypto, Where Will They Trade? 🍪 Bitcoin ETFs record ~$999M in inflows in the past 24 hours. Milk Road’s audience doesn’t just follow markets. They obsess over them. 👉 Partner with Milk Road Prices as of 2:00 p.m. ET. Powered by CoinGecko. THE ROAD BACK TO RISK ON The headline Milk Road Macro Index reading recovered from -1.10 to -0.57 over the past week. Still in RISK OFF, but now sitting just 0.07 points below the threshold that would step the framework up to CAUTION. Source: Milk Road Macro Index Financial conditions and growth impulses did the work on the market side, lifting market momentum from -0.85 to -0.32. The Fed hike resolved the immediate rate uncertainty. The VIX fell, and copper rebounded. Bears have been pointing out that market breadth is very weak, and our indicators agree. Breadth contributed almost nothing across the week. Roughly 30% of S&P 500 names are back above their 50-day trend lines even as the Nasdaq closed at a record high on AI-driven gains. Our indicator flagged this same narrow-breadth problem before, yet the bull market has always continued. I expect this will eventually resolve, and the bull market will continue again. The economy pillar answered one of the prior brief's open questions directly: rate pressure has not reached the hard data. With jobless claims at a post-July low and the Atlanta Fed's Q3 GDP estimate jumping to 5.1%, we’ve seen a relief in economic stress at +0.00 and the macro buffer at full strength (+0.50). This steady backstop has kept the posture from reaching its prior lows. GET YOUR BRAND IN FRONT OF 500K+ INVESTORS Milk Road’s audience doesn’t just follow markets. They obsess over them. Every day, hundreds of thousands of investors come to Milk Road to discover new companies, understand new products, find new investment ideas, and stay ahead of what’s happening across crypto, stocks, AI and finance. And they want to hear about what you’re building. Milk Road gives brands a direct line to that audience across: 500K+ followers and subscribers 35M+ monthly content impressions 400K+ monthly podcast views and listens 187K unique monthly newsletter readers 4,200+ paying Milk Road PRO members Whether you’re launching a new product, introducing your company to investors, or just want more people talking about your brand, we’ll help you get it in front of an audience that’s actually interested. 👉 Partner with Milk Road Know a company that belongs in front of the Milk Road audience? Send this their way. THE ROAD BACK TO RISK ON (P2) The Milk Road Macro Index now sits in a narrow decision zone: posture shifts to CAUTION if today's breadth improvement holds and spreads to more sectors over the next several sessions, and if breadth stays pinned at -1.19 while the AI rally fades before broadening, market momentum goes back down, and the posture follows. The market is the thing to watch here. Futures look good, so I am optimistic for the moment. The October 14th CPI print for September’s inflation data is the next thing to watch. A fourth consecutive 0.3% monthly reading begins bending the six-month inflation window and would put real pressure on the macro buffer for the first time. The one pillar that has held steady through this entire period of the index going RISK OFF. As far as crypto goes, I am not concerned about this as long as the trend keeps improving and doesn’t slip deeper into the RISK OFF territory. The bull market has had periods like this before and always continued. I think it will again. Also, these macro factors would have to be stronger in order to slow down the bullish momentum in the crypto markets too much. For now, I don’t think that the macro setup should present serious risks to the crypto markets. However, we will be closely monitoring the situation to see if the outlook improves or worsens. If you want to see how the Milk Road analysts are navigating this market in their portfolios, check out Milk Road PRO today for just a buck and get in on the action. Until next time, stay safe, stay educated, and stay bullish! BITCOIN AT $86K: THE CRYPTO BULL MARKET IS BACK LG and John discuss Bitcoin and the crypto bull-market breakout: Why the Bitcoin rally took everyone by surprise after the CLARITY Cloture vote failed. Did the regulators jumping in after the Senate stall save crypto? Are we too late to bid altcoins? Watch here . BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD 🍪 Free seminar on blockchain and private markets. Our PRO analyst, Martin, is joining a live webinar to discuss where VC money is flowing. Register for free here .* Bitcoin ETFs record ~$999M in inflows in the past 24 hours. First batch of SEC-approved trading platforms under the Innovation Exemption could go live in Q4. Ethlabs calls ETH, the dollar equivalent, for the onchain economy. *this is sponsored content. 👉 Partner with Milk Road RATE TODAY’S EDITION What'd you think of today's edition? 🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛 F**king great 🥛🥛🥛 Meh, do better 🥛 You didn't bring the heat MILKY MEMES 🤣 Source: @boldleonidas Source: @naiivememe ROADIE REVIEW OF THE DAY 🥛 VITALIK PIC OF THE DAY This content is for educational purposes only. Read full disclaimer Interested in reaching smart readers like you? Sponsor Milk Road Update your email preferences or unsubscribe here © 2026 ImpactDM Inc. operating as Milk Road 1257 Dundas St W Toronto, Ontario M6J1X6, Canada

Derive's record week, explained Carlos The price is the product Crypto’s reflexivity never ceases to amaze me. Price rises, the protocol captures attention, new users try the product, and fundamentals improve, reinforcing the narrative that attracted everyone in the first place. Derive is the latest example. Last week, a few prominent voices on X argued that Derive remained undervalued, while traders shared screenshots of OTM positions executed on the platform. The resulting attention helped drive a more than 170% rally in DRV last week and drew more traders to the product, contributing to an all-time high of $1.26B in weekly options volume. Through Sept. 20, monthly options volume had already reached $2.37B, 24% above the previous record with 10 days still remaining. To assess whether higher volume was accompanied by broader participation, we looked at daily active traders and the number of options trades. Derive averaged 459 daily traders last week, up 68% week over week and the highest full-week average since February 2025. Options trade count increased 83% to nearly 11,800. ETH reclaimed its position as Derive’s largest options market after an extended period of BTC-led activity, generating $632M in weekly volume versus $520M for BTC. Activity also continued to expand beyond the two majors, with HYPE contributing $58M and ZEC reaching $37M, nearly four times its prior week’s volume. ZEC traded throughout all seven days, while both trade count and average trade size increased sharply. The increase in activity was accompanied by greater demand for upside convexity. ETH traders bought roughly $95M of outright OTM calls measured by underlying notional, including sizable exposure to $4,000-$5,000 strikes for 2027, although some of the largest prints formed part of structured call spreads. ZEC offered an even clearer example of speculative positioning, with traders buying calls struck as much as 145% above spot. The flow was not purely short-dated speculation, but it clearly included traders reaching for cheap, far-OTM calls offering highly asymmetric payoffs. Despite the low probability of these far-OTM bets expiring in the money, that is precisely where options differ from perps. Once the premium is paid, a fully paid long option cannot be liquidated because of an interim drawdown. If ZEC fell to $1,000 before rallying to $7,000 by expiry, the call’s payoff would still be determined by its terminal price relative to the strike. A comparably leveraged perp position would likely have been liquidated along the way. The tradeoff is that the option premium can expire entirely worthless, making these far-OTM calls function much like lottery tickets. In any case, the increase in options activity translated into record revenue for Derive. Fees net of rebates nearly doubled to $184K, while options generated an all-time high of $157K in weekly net revenue. Through Sep. 20, Derive had generated $332K in monthly net fees, already 19% above August’s full-month total. I published my original Derive thesis in March and revisited it on Sept. 1 . With DRV now up more than 250% since the initial report, this will probably be my last update for a while. The fundamentals have improved and the thesis has largely played out. At these prices, I would be looking to scale out rather than initiate a new position if sidelined, although bull markets have a habit of pushing assets higher than expected. Bull markets also have the psychological effect of making everyone revise their targets upward. This is precisely where discipline matters most. Based on 30-day annualized revenue, DRV’s price-to-sales multiple reached a record 76x last week, while FDV-to-sales briefly set a new high of 113x before ending the week above 100x. Multiple expansion is not necessarily a signal to sell, but eventually price can move faster than even optimistic growth assumptions can justify. Zooming out, we should expect to see this reflexive loop across other protocols in the current market environment: price attracts attention, attention drives activity, and improving activity reinforces the price narrative. Nowhere is this more true than in crypto, where a rising token price is often the best marketing. In my opinion, this is what justifies buybacks even for early-stage protocols, whereas stock buybacks at comparably early-stage companies would typically represent a poor allocation of capital. But that is a topic for another day. — Carlos DAS Asia is coming up this Oct. 7 in Singapore. Hear from the biggest names in onchain finance. Ticket prices increase this Friday, so grab yours now! Update your email preferences or unsubscribe here © 2026 Blockworks 133 W 19TH ST New York, New York 10011, United States

Plus: Trump backs diesel export ban | Tuesday, September 22, 2026 Axios Closer By Nathan Bomey · Sep 22, 2026 Tuesday ✅. Today's newsletter is 903 words, a 3.5-minute read. 🔔 The dashboard: The S&P 500 closed roughly flat. 🔥 Today's stock spotlight: Lennar (+6.4%) rose after Berkshire Hathaway disclosed it had purchased more than $200 million of the homebuilder's stock in recent days, pushing its stake just over 10%. 1 big thing: Prediction warning Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios The National Council on Problem Gambling issued a strongly worded warning today about the harms from prediction markets, taking a firmer stance on the industry following months of criticism for its initial handling. Why it matters: Kalshi joined the nonprofit in May — the first prediction market to do so — setting off concerns among some problem gambling groups over NCPG's approach to the fast-growing industry. Catch up quick: Kalshi joining NCPG — and providing $2 million in funding to support "trader health and safety" — was viewed at the time as an acknowledgment that some prediction market users engage in troubling financial behavior. Kalshi, however, continued to refer to its user activity as "trading," not "betting" or "gambling." NCPG created a new membership subcategory for Kalshi, called financial services and trading companies — a move that stirred controversy among problem gambling watchdogs. NCPG called on market participants, including prediction markets, to "build real consumer protections" into their platforms. Friction point: The Nevada Council on Problem Gambling recently exited NCPG after expressing concern over the Kalshi partnership. The Michigan Gaming Control Board — which has fought to keep Kalshi out of the state — canceled its membership with the NCPG in July. And the Olympia, Washington-based Evergreen Council on Problem Gambling withdrew last week, citing NCPG's handling of the issue. The latest: NCPG published a new statement about prediction markets on its website today. "People are experiencing real financial, emotional, and relationship consequences as a result of prediction markets," board president Derek Longmeier said in the post. "The harm is not theoretical, and we cannot wait to act. NCPG exists not to litigate whether prediction markets or other emerging activities meet a legal definition of gambling, but to prevent and reduce gambling-related harm wherever it occurs." Kalshi spokesperson Elisabeth Diana argued that all financial markets have risk, especially those with retail participation, "and it's exactly why we worked with the NCPG to create a new financial services category." "We have industry-leading consumer protections and resources for traders, and while we disagree with the NCPG on their assessment, we welcome the dialogue," Diana said. 2. Trump backs diesel export ban Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images President Trump said today that he supports the idea of a ban on U.S. diesel exports, joining other conservative voices who back the policy, Axios' Josephine Walker writes . 🗣️ Zoom in: Trump, asked during a press appearance on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York if he supported a diesel ban, said that he had called for one too. "I've said let's not send out the diesel. We make a lot of diesel, and it could have a little bit of an effect on regular automobile gasoline because when you do that, you know it's a sort of a flow, it's a balance," he said. "But no, I've called for it. I've called for it within my people." Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent today said the administration is looking into whether implementing a ban would be feasible, and whether a full or partial ban "would work." 🚛 The big picture: A ban would keep diesel that otherwise would be exported in the U.S., potentially increasing domestic supplies and lowering prices in the short term. But analysts warn it could drive up global diesel prices and eventually feed higher costs back into the U.S. economy. 💭 Thought bubble, via Axios' Ben Geman : The politics of $6.50 diesel are quickly overwhelming a consensus among oil market analysts that an export ban could ultimately backfire. Go deeper 3. Other happenings Photo: Dimitrios Kambouris/WireImage 🤝 Royal Caribbean shares sank 6% on a report it is nearing a $3 billion deal to take a 50% equity stake in resort operator Sandals. ( FT ) 💳 Kalshi is looking to broaden its appeal with institutional traders, filing today for approval to offer margin trading to qualified investors on certain event contracts, excluding sports. ( CNBC ) 🤖 Alibaba unveiled an AI chip that it said is 3x as powerful as its predecessor, and said it plans to expand its data center footprint. ( Reuters ) A MESSAGE FROM AXIOS Everything you need to simplify "Simplify," a new book by the co-founders of Axios, is a step-by-step playbook for spending your time on what makes you perform and feel your best. The takeaway: Learn the Confront, Delete, Amplify framework used by the world's most effective leaders to cut complexity and reclaim focus. Grab a copy today. 4. Peloton hopes to not tread lightly Peloton is introducing three new treadmills, including its first folding model. Photo: Peloton For a while now, Peloton has felt like it's been running in place. Now it's hoping to lure new subscribers who are looking to do just that. Driving the news: Peloton is debuting its first foldable treadmill — also its most affordable one ever — and new AI-powered coaching tools in a deeper push into running. The fitness brand — which has been since its post-pandemic peak — wants to broaden its image beyond its trademark bikes and classes. Zoom in: The company is introducing three new treadmills, all available in the U.S. beginning Oct. 1: One is the Peloton Tread Flex, its most affordable treadmill and first under $3,000, with a starting price of $2,195 and a foldable design. CEO Peter Stern tells Axios that it provides the company with an opportunity to attract more cost-conscious consume