Plus: Your new job | Tuesday, September 29, 2026 Presented By Capital One Axios Markets By Emily Peck and Matt Phillips · Sep 29, 2026 🎳 It's Tuesday. We're lining 'em up and knocking 'em down. 🚨 IPO sirens: Oura, the smart ring maker, announced this morning that it is postponing its planned initial public offering "due to uncertainty in the IPO market." AI giant Anthropic, meanwhile, which could be the largest IPO ever, had a net loss of nearly $42 billion last year (most of it from an accounting charge) and plans to spend $518 billion on computing and infrastructure, according to Reuters , which says it has seen its prospectus. 🗓️ Today, Matt checks in on one of his fave topics — yield curve discourse! (In other bond market action, the yield on the 10-year Treasury note topped 5.25% overnight.) 👨💼 Plus, a new analysis finds that AI will transform everyone's jobs. Just last year, folks said AI would eliminate the need for humans entirely — so perhaps that's a bit of relief. Let's do this! 1,198 words, a 4.5-minute read. 1 big thing: 🗣️ Yield curve reenters the chat By Matt Phillips Data: FactSet; Chart: Axios/Matt Phillips The Treasury yield curve has reentered the financial chat, as investors and traders remain mindful of its strong record of forecasting recessions. Why it matters: In the past, when certain segments of the yield curve have inverted, or turned negative, it has been one of the most reliable signals that a recession would follow. Driving the news: Over the last few weeks, the difference between yields on two-year Treasury notes and yields on the 10-year Treasury note tumbled to roughly 0.20 percentage points (20 basis points). It has bounced somewhat since then, but the sharp move raised the prospect that this part of the Treasury curve could soon invert. What they're saying: UBS Global Wealth Management noted yesterday that the compression of this 2s/10s spread — as it's known on Wall Street —"raises the possibility that 10-year Treasuries could soon yield less than shorter maturities, creating an inversion that has historically preceded U.S. recessions." The big picture: There are a few theories about why inversions have front-run recessions in the past. Here's one: Banks borrow at shorter maturities and use that money to make longer-term loans at higher rates — and the yield curve mirrors that spread, which is, effectively, a lender's profit margin. The wider that gap is, the bigger the incentive for banks to lend. But when the curve shrinks or inverts, the incentive to lend evaporates. And since bank credit is vital to economic growth, if bank lending falls, a recession more often than not is in the offing. Data: FactSet; Chart: Axios/Matt Phillips Zoom in: When we talk about the "yield curve," we usually mean the difference — or spread — in yields between Treasury securities of different maturities. For instance, the spread between yields on two-year Treasury and 10-year Treasury notes is one of the most closely watched. But there's another stretch of the curve that has been even more accurate as a predictor: the spread between three-month Treasury bills and the yield on the 10-year note. Stunning stat: Between 1969 and 2020, every time this segment of the yield curve inverted — that is, turned negative — a recession followed. In all, it correctly called eight straight recessions without a single false positive. Reality check: The three-month/10-year's streak as an economic Cassandra came to an abrupt end in November 2022, as the Federal Reserve jacked up short-term interest rates to counter the post-COVID inflation. The curve remained persistently inverted until 2025. Yet, no recession followed. More importantly, that segment of the curve remains safely in positive territory now. Indeed, while the spread between two-year and 10-year notes has been falling, the spread between three-month bills and 10-year notes has been rising and is now roughly 1 percentage point (100 basis points). In other words, the most reliable part of the yield curve when it comes to predicting recessions seems to be getting further away from indicating any risk of an economic downturn. The bottom line: As we wrote yesterday, the signal that bond markets seem to be sending is that the economy is much stronger than many may have been expecting lately. As a result, investors are ratcheting up their rate expectations for the next couple years, essentially a bet that the Fed will have to keep the short-term rates it controls higher for longer. And that's why the two-year note is up so much, resulting in a sharp decline in the 2s/10s segment of the curve. A MESSAGE FROM CAPITAL ONE How resident services extend impact Resident services can help families stay housed, manage costs and build financial stability over time. An example: Capital One’s $2.5 million investment in True Ground will support affordable housing and resident services across Northern Virginia and the greater D.C. area. Learn more. 2. 🦾 You might need a different job By Emily Peck Illustration: Allie Carl/Axios Roughly 11 million American workers — about 7% of the current labor force — might need to change occupations over the next decade, as the economy adapts to the AI era, per a new analysis from the McKinsey Global Institute out today. The big picture: New technologies have always transformed the way people work, but the AI workforce transition could happen at three to four times the historical pace, they write. By the numbers: The analysis estimates that 770,000 workers per year might need to switch their occupations — the long-run average is about 215,000. The U.S. got a little taste of what that was like in the pandemic years, the researchers point out — the rate then was about 788,000. Those who don't switch jobs will see their work transformed by AI: About 70% of U.S. workers will have to do some level of role reinvention, the report finds. (Anyone who lived through the rise of the internet might recall what that's like.)

Plus: Advisors turn to alts to avoid concentration risk. September 29, 2026 PRESENTED BY Good morning. AI’s gone AWOL. Artificial intelligence acting on its own accord isn’t just the plot of a sci-fi novel. It happened this summer in probably the last place you’d want it to: government websites. OpenAI agents “went rogue and meddled” with the Securities and Exchange Commission’s site, taking data and sharing it externally, The New York Times reported. Exactly what data the agents took is unclear, but it appears no private information was hacked. And OpenAI isn’t alone. Agents from Anthropic, Google and Meta have all had similar instances. OpenAI told the newspaper the agents were “behaving in unexpected and concerning ways,” rather than breaching data and acting deviously. You know, it’s statements like that that make our skeptic-eye squints get even tighter. INVESTING STRATEGIES AI Trade’s Breadth Buoys Strategies That ‘Calibrate’ Exposure Photo by Luke Peters via Unsplash Alternatives haven’t been this relevant since the ’90s grunge scene. Equity concentration is at historically high levels. With SpaceX’s June listing, the 10 largest companies now account for about 35% of Morningstar’s Total Market Index, and Goldman Sachs’ research that artificial intelligence spending will make up about 40% of this year’s S&P 500 earnings growth comes as no surprise. That has some investors turning to alts to diversify away from equities. “The scale of the AI theme is so big and so powerful, and its tentacles stretch into so many different things, that watching out for your exposure to AI is a key part of risk management,” said David Stubbs, chief investment strategist at AlphaCore Wealth Advisory. If clients are determined to stay liquid, it is, of course, possible to get away from AI by allocating to sectors, factors or countries in equities that don’t have AI exposure, “but without utilizing alternatives, you’re trying to climb the ladder with one hand tied behind your back.” Alpha Bet Soup One area that Shang Chou, cofounder of Dishmi Capital, is looking at for diversification is managed futures, which can provide a consistent positive absolute return. “In the case of really sharp equity market selloffs — think 2008, 2009, 2022 — these strategies actually really performed well, and they give you the so-called ‘crisis alpha,’” he said. “Most individual, taxable investors are totally underallocated to this strategy.” Other suggestions include: Early-stage venture capital across themes that are only at the fringes of AI, like consumer, defense and biotech. Evergreen vehicles can provide more transparency than traditional capital call structures, Stubbs said. Manufacturing has been a trend, given the current presidential administration’s priorities. Lower middle-market private equity for companies building physical things is a way to play this theme, and it tends to have cheaper valuations and more options for finding liquidity, like selling up the private equity food chain, said Matt Malone, head of investment management at Opto Investments. Don’t Throw the Bot Out With the Bathwater. All this said, AI is still a growth driver. “What we’re seeing from a lot of clients is not necessarily that they’re trying to diversify away from AI, it’s that they’re trying to get exposure to AI in a different way,” Malone said. These clients are looking to get into fast-growing, private companies that may be bought out by Anthropic or OpenAI or contributing to the AI infrastructure buildout. It’s all about balance, Stubbs said. “People often jump from, ‘I’ve got lots of exposure to AI’ to ‘I don’t want any exposure to AI’ and they miss the middle ground, which is, ‘Can you calibrate and diversify your exposure to AI?’” Written by Quinn Waller ETF CORNER PRESENTED BY MORNINGSTAR The 5% Rule to Know Before You Buy Semiliquid Funds Photo via Morningstar There’s a growing list of companies minting fortunes having never listed a share. Hence why you may be eyeing that nice juicy semiliquid fund for a client, coveted pre-IPO name included. But should you want that money out, the door typically opens once a quarter, and only ajar, often up to 5% of the fund’s assets (keeping the breeze out, and the dollars in). This reality leaves you with tough questions: Is this fund suited to my client’s goals? How does the manager handle redemptions and leverage? How do I set my client’s expectations upfront? We had the opportunity to sit down with Bryan Armour, Morningstar’s Director of ETF and Semiliquid Research , who addressed these questions and more, including why a stated expense ratio may understate the cost. Read our Q&A with Bryan Armour here. INDUSTRY NEWS Transaction Inaction: RIA Deals Are Falling These owners are staying put for now. After nearly two years of hitting record heights each quarter, M&A activity among RIAs has begun to slow, according to new DeVoe and Co. research. As of early last week, RIAs had announced just 72 transactions in the third quarter, a nearly 20% decline from the same period last year. “A short pause may simply shift transactions into later quarters,” company CEO David DeVoe said. “A prolonged pause could leave some owners with less time to prepare for succession and more pressure to make a decision when circumstances become urgent.” Hold On Succession needs, demand for scale and buyer interest in high-quality firms still remain. So why aren’t owners selling? Well, the world is on fire. (Then again, when is it not?) Tariffs, the Iran war, surging gasoline prices and other economic shocks are creating plenty of volatility, uncertainty and distractions. Advisors are more focused on clients right now, DeVoe said, adding that selling a business is a major strategic decision that demands considerable time and focus. “It can move down an owner’s priority list,” he told Advisor Upside. The research also found: RIA deal activity started the year vigorously, with 93 transactions in the first quarter, m

Plus: Kodiak Sciences pops on an eye-popping breakthrough. September 29, 2026 PRESENTED BY BETTERMENT Good morning. The US and China are playing ball again. On Monday they released a list of “nonsensitive goods” (including actual baseballs) worth roughly $30 billion on each side that will benefit from tariff cuts. Among the items the US plans to allow in at lower rates, following Chinese President Xi Jinping’s state visit to Washington last week, are bed and table linens, curtains, household scales, food processors and juicers and microwave ovens. More notably, Christmas creep is hitting the trade wars, not just drugstores. On the list of things soon to be taxed less on their way in from China are Christmas-tree lamps, Christmas ornaments made from glass and wood, and figures depicting Christmas festivities and nativity scenes. It’s the trade standoff equivalent of the sound system in Walgreens spinning the Michael Bublé Christmas before it’s even Halloween. MARKETS S&P 500 7,683.69 ▼ -0.77% DJI 51,481.51 ▼ -0.67% KOD $89.92 ▲ +177.96% Stock data as of market close on September 28, 2026. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Nvidia Develops Tools to Tackle Rogue AI Risks Photo via Jonathan Brady / PA ROTA - B68 / Avalon/Newscom Pushing back against the P(doom) crowd, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has argued that leading labs don’t need more regulation, just a little restraint and better tools. His company claims it can now provide the latter. On Monday, Nvidia launched the Open Agent Safety Platform, a sandbox for training and observing new models and agents designed to prevent the kind of prison breaks that led to hacks at Hugging Face and the US government this summer. It’s a big new product for the chipmaker and the latest example of Nvidia expanding its product line beyond chips. Thinking Inside the Sandbox “The first problem is the isolation; the containment wasn’t good enough. If the isolation and containment was good enough, that technology would be sitting in a lab, doing whatever it’s doing,” Huang said on an episode of The New York Times podcast The Ezra Klein Show when asked about the rogue AI models. The company’s new platform, he said on CNBC Monday , would create a “browser for agents” without any hidden escape hatch into the open web. He called misbehaving AI a solvable engineering problem, but allowed that if somehow it can’t be solved, we’re in big trouble. Add it to the list of Nvidia’s software and service offerings. The company agreed to acquire the aforementioned Hugging Face for $13 billion earlier this month in a bid to become the hub of open-source AI models and applications; the acquisition expands the company’s existing AI software library. The training sandbox, meanwhile, features two key tools that will continue to expand its chips-and-software flywheel: The first feature is OpenShell, which Nvidia had previewed in March and which runs on its Vera CPU chips. The open-source tool allows users to establish guardrails for what agents can and cannot access. The second feature is another open-source tool called Sentry. It runs on the company’s BlueField data processing units and can monitor agents in real time, quarantining those “that attempt to move outside their boundaries in milliseconds,” Nvidia said. Buy, Buy, Buyback: Now that the leading frontier labs have established a market foothold, they must “shift their R&D … from just capability to a lot of verification, evaluation and testing,” Huang said before the product launch, predicting that “the amount of compute necessary to develop these models has increased by a factor of 10, because the evaluation is so rigorous.” In other words: more chip sales for Nvidia. In the meantime, the company also announced Monday that it plans to spend an additional $150 billion on buybacks, bringing its total remaining authorization to $235 billion. That would be the largest repurchase plan in corporate history, fitting for the largest company in history by market cap. Written by Brian Boyle PRESENTED BY BETTERMENT Earn a 4.25% Var. APY on up to $1M Through Feb 15 With Betterment Photo via Betterment Grow your savings with a variable APY 11x the national average with Betterment’s Cash Reserve. Start saving for tomorrow and set money aside for what matters to you. You can create multiple savings goals and use Betterment’s automated tools to help you achieve them. Start growing your cash with as little as $10 and no minimum balance . Optimize your cash today. What makes high-yield cash at Betterment better? $0 fees. Forget any monthly or maintenance costs — what you earn is what you keep. Rest easy with FDIC insurance up to $4M (individual) and $8M (joint) on eligible cash through our program banks , subject to certain conditions. Unlimited withdrawals. Unlike traditional savings accounts, Betterment doesn’t limit how often you can access your money. Ready to boost your cash? Get started today. * HEALTHCARE New Eye Treatment Boosts Kodiak Into Ranks of Resurgent Biotechs Photo via Dirk Shadd/ZUMA Press/Newscom Kodiak Sciences surged 177.96% yesterday after the biotech company reported upbeat results from a late-stage study for its newest eye-disease treatments. Kodiak is the latest success story in a resurgent US biotech industry. The firm’s study suggested its drugs Zenkuda and KSI-501 improved eyesight for patients with wet macular degeneration as much as the leading treatment Eylea made by rival Regeneron Pharmaceuticals. Zenkuda stood out by requiring fewer injections than Eylea — once every six months compared with every eight weeks. Regeneron’s shares slid about 5% yesterday. An Eye Treatment for an Eye Treatment The latest study’s success could be the beginning of a turnaround for Kodiak. After a previous trial four years ago failed to prove Zenkuda could match Eylea’s effectiveness, Kodiak’s shares fell about 80%. The company faced another setback the following year when late-stage studies for a treatment didn’t yield the expected results

Sovereign bonds force a rare 3.4% gold liquidation. Treasury Yield Smashes Gold While Bitcoin Defends $84k. Sovereign bonds force a rare 3.4% gold liquidation. Sep 29 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 Sovereign debt markets are flashing red across the globe as long-duration assets endure severe pressure. The US 30-year bond price return index has plummeted 60% from its 2020 peak. Benchmark 10-year Treasury yields have surged to 5.17%, pushing borrowing costs to multi-decade records. This rapid duration shock finally cracked traditional safe havens yesterday, triggering a brutal -3.4% single-day liquidation in spot gold down to $4,145/oz.Yet while precious metals broke below their key moving averages, Bitcoin held firm near $84,150, decoupling from traditional hedges and breaking out sharply on the BTC/Gold ratio. Fed funds futures now price an aggressive 72.5% probability of an October rate hike ahead of tomorrow’s Core PCE print. Macro liquidity is draining fast, but capital is no longer treating digital collateral and legacy metals the same way.Here’s what our desk is watching. This Is The Only "Buy The Dip" That Matters In September. TOKEN2049 . 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. GET 10% discount and register Sovereign Yields Break Global Fixed Income The global bond market is enduring its deepest structural unwind in modern financial history. Long-dated paper is bearing the brunt of runaway fiscal deficits and sticky inflation expectations. The 30-year Treasury yield hit 5.56%, while 10-year yields stand at 19-year highs. Japanese government bond yields have concurrently surged to 31-year peaks, signaling that foreign central banks can no longer anchor domestic curves.Federal Reserve policy expectations are shifting dramatically. Despite conventional wisdom that the Fed rarely hikes immediately before a US election, the CME FedWatch tool shows a 72.5% chance of a 25-basis-point increase in October to a 4.00%–4.25% range. Tomorrow’s Core PCE print is forecast to rise from 3.3% to 3.4%, fueling fears of an overtightening regime. This liquidity drain is crushing unhedged duration and penalizing conventional defensive assets across the macro landscape. Gold proved entirely vulnerable to this yield spike. Yesterday’s -3.4% crash registered a severe Z-score of -2.90, an extreme tail-risk event that occurs in roughly 1% of trading sessions over two decades. Having rejected from the $4,650 resistance band down to $4,145, gold broke below its 50-day moving average. When this technical breakdown occurred in prior cycles, an 18% multi-week drawdown followed. The liquidation confirms that traditional stores of value are failing to insulate portfolios against sovereign debt selling pressure. The AI Debt Squeeze and Corporate Capital Costs Surging interest rates are now slamming corporate credit markets, threatening the capital-intensive technology buildout. Tech hyperscalers and data center operators face a painful escalation in financing costs just as their capital requirements peak. The massive hardware buildout can no longer rely on ultra-cheap leverage. $4.1 Trillion Capital Stack: JPMorgan estimates global AI buildout debt will hit $4.1 trillion through 2030, with investment-grade bonds accounting for $2.1 trillion and private credit supplying $1.3 trillion. Parabolic Bond Issuance: Hyperscaler bond issuance exploded from $17 billion in 2024 to $194 billion in the first half of 2026, with estimates pointing to $279 billion by year-end. High-Yield Spreads Blow Out: SoftBank raised $11.1 billion in a multi-tranche junk-bond sale to fund AI projects, paying an onerous 9.75% coupon on its 7-year note. Benchmark Rate Pressure: Technology issuers are issuing new corporate paper against a 10-year Treasury yield sitting at 5.17%, up roughly 100 basis points year-to-date. Energy Cost Compounding: Elevated oil prices and utility rates continue to feed infrastructure input costs, compressing operational margins across sovereign data centers. Credit Rating Bifurcation: High-yield data center developers and neoclouds face $700 billion in elevated borrowing needs, pricing speculative tech spreads at severe premiums. This borrowing crunch is triggering sharp dispersion across broad equities. The market has happily tolerated sky-high capital expenditures so long as debt remained affordable. Now, rising coupon obligations threaten free cash flow projections across tier-one semiconductor stocks and cloud platforms. If benchmark yields hold above 5%, hyperscalers will be forced to reconsider their capex trajectories, leading to broad multiple compression for growth equities. The transition from free money to expensive debt exposes vulnerable enterprise business models. Investors who bought into the AI narrative without examining balance-sheet liabilities are experiencing a harsh wake-up call. 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 . On-Chain Capital Rotation Defies the Macro Tape While traditional risk assets bleed, crypto market analysis paints an entirely different picture. Bitcoin is displaying remarkable structural strength by defending the $84,000 level despite macro headwinds. The weekly BTC/Gold ratio has confirmed a massive double-bottom breakout accompanied by a definitive breach of its multi-year RSI downtrend. Institutional flows are viewing Bitcoin as pure, unencumbered collateral that carries zero sovereign counterparty liabili

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Bond Yields Break Macro Assets While Bitcoin Holds Strong 🚨5 Cautious setups as Gold Cracks Down Bond Yields Break Macro Assets While Bitcoin Holds Strong Sep 29 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 haven failure, not a bounce. Gold took one of its rarest down days in years, and the easy-Fed story stayed dead. Yields are still pressing multi-year highs. Equities are drifting with duration, not leading it. Oil kept the war premium after Washington rejected Iran’s Hormuz offer. Crude is not sprinting every hour, but it is not cheap, and it is not settled. Energy is still feeding the hike path. It is not giving the bond market a way out. Bitcoin held the low $80,000s while gold broke. The metal lost the hideout, and crypto did not follow it down. What ran inside alts is being sold, not chased. Crypto is trading the same stack as stocks: tighter-for-longer policy, a bond market that will not ease, and geopolitics that can reprice oil before PCE hits. The risk bid is selective. It has not rolled over. Here is what we are watching. Poll of the Day ( Presented by Rain Trade ) 🎯 POLL Gold dropped 3.4% below its 50D average, while BTC defended $84k. Which asset dominates Q4 🟠 BTC to $100k 🟡 Gold rebound 📉 Both sell off 📉 Both sell off Today’s Charts: Chart #1 – Ethena (ENAUSDT) 4-Hour Chart #2 – Arbitrum(ARBUSDT) 1-Day Chart #3 – Cronos(CROUSDT) 1-Day Chart #4 – Quant(QNTUSDT) 1-Day Chart #5 – Costco (COST) 1-Day Chart #1 – Ethena (ENAUSDT) 4-Hour Chartist: Kapoor (For the chart screenshot, ) Ethena has initiated a short-term corrective rollover after printing a double-top rejection near the $0.2920 local high, falling back below the $0.2730 horizontal shelf to trade around $0.2553 on the 4-hour timeframe. Operating as a synthetic dollar protocol on Ethereum, Ethena provides the decentralized USDe token backed through delta-neutral cash-and-carry hedging alongside the "Internet Bond" yield-generating dollar instrument. This short trade setup targets an extended mean-reversion drop toward the $0.2180–$0.2200 liquidity shelf as long as overhead resistance caps relief bounces below the $0.2730–$0.2940 zone. Trade Levels: Entry: $0.2732 Stop Loss: $0.2954 Take Profit Levels (TP): TP1: $0.2193 Powerful narratives create powerful moves. With 247 Research , you get the insights to be early to the biggest trends in crypto. Chart #2 – Arbitrum(ARBUSDT) 1-Day Chartist: Kapoor (For the chart screenshot, ) Arbitrum is exhibiting a bearish rejection following an impulsive expansion into overhead range resistance, failing to sustain acceptance above the $0.2130–$0.2200 zone to print $0.2068 on the daily timeframe. Functioning as Ethereum’s premier optimistic rollup scaling suite powered by Arbitrum Nitro and Stylus, the network provides high-throughput, low-fee smart contract execution alongside modular infrastructure for Layer-3 Orbit chains. This short trade setup targets an extended mean-reversion drop toward the $0.1450–$0.1500 liquidity shelf as long as overhead resistance caps relief bounces below the $0.2130–$0.2380 zone. Trade Levels: Entry: $0.234 Stop Loss: $0.214 Take Profit Levels (TP): TP1: $0.147 Chart #3 – Cronos(CROUSDT) 1-Day Chartist: Kapoor (For the chart screenshot, ) Cronos is executing an ascending pullback retest following an impulsive multi-week range breakout, absorbing supply above the $0.05965 horizontal pivot to trade near $0.06394 on the daily timeframe. Built as an interoperable, EVM-compatible Layer-1 and Layer-2 network within the Cosmos ecosystem utilizing the Cosmos SDK and IBC protocol, Cronos powers decentralized finance and gaming dApps while serving as the foundational settlement and utility token for the Crypto.com platform. This long trade setup targets an upward expansion toward the $0.07845 overhead resistance target as long as the $0.05207–$0.05965 support base holds. Trade Levels: Entry: $0.059 Stop Loss: $0.052 Take Profit Levels (TP): TP1: $0.072 This Is The Only “Buy The Dip” That Matters In September. TOKEN2049 . 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. GET 10% discount and register Chart #4 – Quant(QNTUSDT) 1-Day Chartist: Kapoor (For the chart screenshot, ) Quant is consolidating in a high-timeframe flag pattern following an explosive vertical impulse out of its $78.97 sub-range floor, establishing buyer absorption above the $194.07 horizontal pivot to trade near $250.89 on the 4-hour timeframe. Designed to bridge enterprise legacy finance and distributed ledger networks, Quant delivers blockchain interoperability through its patented Overledger operating system, allowing institutions and central banks to deploy multi-chain applications (mApps) and facilitate cross-chain tokenized asset settlement without requiring complex consensus overhead or additional Layer-1 infrastructure. This long trade setup targets a retest and upward continuation toward the $372.80 overhead swing-high target as long as the $141.36–$194.07 support base holds. Trade Levels: Entry: $194 Stop Loss: $141 Take Profit Levels (TP): TP1: $372 Chart #5 – Costco (COST) 1-Day Chartist: Kapoor (For the chart screenshot, ) (COST refers to the Stock of company Costco Wholesale Corporation and not a cryptocurrency.) Costco has printed an impulsive bullish reversal off its macro support shelf, absorbing sell-side pressure to reclaim the $905.59 horizontal pivot and trade near $919.52 on the daily timeframe. Operating as a global membership-only warehouse club retailer, Costco generates predictable, recurring high-margin cash flow through annual membership fees while offering low markups on bulk consumer staples, private-label Kirkland Signature goods, e-commerce fulfillment, and ancillary s

MRMI slides to -0.87 as bond yields crush financial conditions. 🥛 The fear deepens: The 10-year just hit 5.18% 😬 MRMI slides to -0.87 as bond yields crush financial conditions. John Gillen GM. This is Milk Road, the newsletter that is here to worry about macro so you don’t have to, although in this case, you still have to a little bit (sorry). Here’s what we’ve got for you today: ✍️ The fear deepens. 🍪 A bull market won't save bad tokenomics. Today’s edition is brought to you by The Flyover, because keeping up with the world shouldn’t take you all morning. Get the biggest stories delivered free every morning. Prices as of 2:00 p.m. ET. Powered by CoinGecko. THE FEAR DEEPENS The headline allocation posture of the Milk Road Macro Index fell to -0.87 this week. Source: Milk Road Macro Index This puts the index deeper into CASH and now 0.37 points below the CAUTION threshold, fully reversing the prior brief's recovery in five trading sessions. Breadth did improve (+0.58 over seven days to -0.99) as the prior brief expected, but the bond market ran the other direction. Idk about you, but I hate when it does that. Source: CNBC The 10-year Treasury yield climbed to 5.18%, a near two-decade high, sending rate volatility to its biggest weekly surge in over a year and pulling financial conditions from +0.37 to -0.28. That single swing more than canceled the breadth progress and drove market momentum to -0.62. So that’s the market update side. Now let’s check on the economic side. The economy pillar answered the prior brief's hard-data question decisively: the Atlanta Fed's Q3 nowcast holds at 5.0%, jobless claims fell again to 197,000, and the macro buffer is at full strength (+0.50) with stress at +0.00. Pretty much as good as it gets, but the same strong growth that is keeping stress low is feeding the higher-for-longer rate narrative that is crushing financial conditions. So, both pillars now trace back to the same root cause pulling in opposite directions. WHO HAS TIME TO READ ALL THIS NEWS?! 🗞️ War in Iran. $6 diesel. Space Weapons. Canada + the EU. And now AI is gonna kill us sooner than we thought. Keeping up with checks notes basic everyday news in 2026 is basically a full-time job. Luckily, The Flyover sorts through the madness so you don’t have to. These guys dig through hundreds of sources every day and pull out the stories actually worth knowing (instead of all that clicky crap). Then they package it all into one quick morning newsletter you can read in a few minutes. No doomscrolling. No 37 open tabs. No spending half your morning figuring out what the hell happened while you were sleeping. Just a quick read before you roll out of bed. Nearly 3 million readers already start their mornings with The Flyover. And it’s completely free. By clicking above, you are subscribing to The Flyover’s free daily newsletter and will begin receiving future editions in your inbox. THE FEAR DEEPENS (P2) The sharpest near-term tension is equity volatility staying calm while bond volatility has already surged. If equity markets reprice to match what bond traders are already pricing, financial conditions fall further, and market momentum has room to worsen from here. Two prints will resolve or extend the setup: August PCE on September 30th tests whether the strong growth is flowing into actual spending, and October 14 CPI determines whether a fourth consecutive 0.3% monthly print starts bending the six-month inflation window in a way that eventually puts the macro buffer, the last pillar holding, under real pressure. If inflation starts to blow out, we might be cooked, chat, ngl. The path back toward CAUTION requires bond yields to retreat enough to let financial conditions stabilize while breadth keeps widening. Right now neither condition is in place. There is another option though. If the equities market sells off, it might cool things down a bit, and might give the Fed cover to keep conditions loose even if inflation heats up. Overall, there are some serious macro concerns in the market right now, and that is weighing on asset prices outside of crypto. Inside crypto, however, Bitcoin has confirmed a second weekly close above the May high of $83K, and it seems more likely now that Bitcoin’s price will ultimately continue higher in Q4. This will not be a straight line, but it is the most likely path for the moment. Altcoins are popping off all over the place. If you want to see what I and the other Milk Road PRO analysts are doing in our portfolios through this period, join Milk Road PRO today for just a buck! Hang on tight. Things are going to stay volatile and probably get even more wild. Stay safe, stay educated, and stay bullish. BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD 🍪 If you hold HOOD, read this. Robinhood has grown into an all-in-one platform for stocks, crypto, IRAs, prediction markets, credit cards and advanced trading tools.** Bank run risk: Apollo's Torsten Slok says AI agents could drain bank deposits by sweeping savings into higher-yield accounts. NEAR's comeback? NEAR is still down 75% from its 2022 peak, but Near Intents fees hit ~$2.05M last week (up 88% in a month). Hot take: A bull market won't save bad tokenomics. If insiders hold the supply and there's no real buyer, the token can still go to zero. **this is partner content. 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

Plus: SpaceX's fiery show | Monday, September 28, 2026 Axios Closer By Nathan Bomey · Sep 28, 2026 Monday ✅. Today's newsletter is 806 words, a 3-minute read. 🚨 Situational awareness: Semiconductor company AMD said it has agreed to acquire World Labs, a physical AI model company, for $8.2 billion in stock. 📉 The dashboard: The S&P 500 closed down 0.8%. 🥶 Today's stock spotlight: Boeing (-6.9%) slid after an FAA administrator said the agency is holding off on certification of the company's long-delayed and crucial 737 Max 10 model over a software issue. 1 big thing: Controlling rogue AI agents Illustration: Allie Carl/Axios Nvidia is deploying a new tool that it says can be used to prevent and contain rogue and potentially dangerous AI agents. Why it matters: The world's largest chip company has resisted calls to slow AI development over safety fears — arguing now that technological guardrails can keep AI under control. Driving the news: Nvidia debuted the Nvidia Open Agent Safety Platform, which includes its OpenShell open-source software system and its Sentry agent monitoring system. The system "traces all actions" by agents running on Nvidia Vera CPUs, promising to "quarantine agents that attempt to move outside their boundaries in milliseconds." State of play: OpenAI, Anthropic and security researchers are investigating tens of thousands of incidents in which their frontier models took steps that outside evaluators would consider problematic, sources told Axios' Madison Mills last week. The episodes include bypassing guardrails, creating message boards, escaping sandboxes, website hijacking, self-prompting or seeking to bypass monitors. "Some of the agents even misreported what they did," Nvidia noted in a blog post today announcing its new platform. The intrigue: We're moving into a new era where AI will be monitoring AI. And that will create more demand for chips — including the type that Nvidia sells — plus the data centers that use them and the power that's needed to run them. 🗣️ "If security agents or validation models are running alongside production agents, that creates another inference workload that did not previously exist," writes Brad Gastwirth, global head of research and market intel at Circular Technology. Zoom out: The Nvidia tool rollout comes amid a feverish debate over whether rogue AI could destroy humanity. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has dismissed the most serious concerns as fearmongering. Go deeper 2. Key milestone ends with a bang Photo: Brandon Bell/Getty Images SpaceX's next-generation Starship rocket came back to Earth earlier than planned after its first orbital flight today, with an explosion visible on the company's livestream just after touchdown in the Pacific Ocean, Axios' Alex Fitzpatrick writes . 💸 Why it matters: The massive, fully reusable Starship is key to SpaceX's commercial spaceflight ambitions. Driving the news: Starship launched just before 9 a.m. ET on a planned test flight of about 10 hours. It was set to orbit Earth about six times before splashing down, but SpaceX decided to bring it back after only about three hours. 🛰️ As part of the mission, Starship deployed 26 of the company's new, better-performing Starlink V3 internet satellites. 🔥 The cause of the apparent explosion was not immediately clear, and the company didn't offer any details. What's next: SpaceX plans to eventually "catch" Starship in the arms of its launch tower — a feat it's accomplished with Super Heavy, but not Starship — but didn't make the attempt this time. 📉 SpaceX shares closed down 2.2%. 3. Other happenings Photo: Hollie Adams/Bloomberg via Getty Images 💼 Meta is creating a new business platform for selling AI tools to enterprise customers, hiring former MongoDB chief executive CJ Desai to lead it. ( WSJ ) ⛽️ The Trump administration finalized long-expected regulations reducing fuel economy standards and ending the trading of emissions credits. Automakers will be required to average 34.9 mpg for their new vehicle fleets by the 2031 model year, down from the Biden administration's 50.4 mpg. ( NPR ) 🤖 Anthropic released a new version of its middle tier Sonnet AI model. ( TechCrunch ) A MESSAGE FROM AXIOS Break through the noise with Axios Reach execs and business leaders with Axios. We'll help you tell your story in the right way: We'll distill your brand's message into its most effective form with Smart Brevity. No clutter, no filler — just clean, smart and effective. Contact us to learn more. 4. Plugged back in The Bose Noise Cancelling Wired Earbuds cost $99. Photo: Bose In case you've been tuning out, the kids these days are glomming onto wired headphones — part of their embrace of retro tech. Now, headphone brand Bose is jumping onto the bandwagon with the introduction of its new Bose Noise Cancelling Wired Earbuds at a price point of $99. State of play: The analog revival includes renewed interest in " dumbphones ," vinyl records , alarm clocks and point-and-shoot cameras . "Wired earbuds are experiencing a cultural renaissance," Raza Haider, president of Bose Premium Consumer Audio, said in a statement. Zoom in: The new Bose product uses a USB-C connection to work with phones, tablets and computers for instant audio. No pairing or app is necessary. 💭 Nathan's thought bubble: That's right, kids: Not everything needs to be charged. A MESSAGE FROM AXIOS Break through the noise with Axios Reach execs and business leaders with Axios. We'll help you tell your story in the right way: We'll distill your brand's message into its most effective form with Smart Brevity. No clutter, no filler — just clean, smart and effective. Contact us to learn more. Why stop here? Let's go Pro. Axios Pro Deals helps you get smarter and faster on the deals, opportunities, and investments that matter most. Get started today . Follow Axios across:

Should banks be worried? Byron Gilliam “ This is the new prize in technology, and it is the ultimate one. ” — Ben Thompson The third era of the web is here Hopes were initially high that the world wide web would be a decentralizing and disintermediating technology. “One trend that I see is that it’s the individual who replaces the big organization in many of our lives,” civil libertarian and Grateful Dead lyricist John Perry Barlow wrote in 1996. In that first era of the web, the big organizations most likely to be replaced were publishers. “Writers and readers can now connect to one another directly,” internet evangelist Richard Seltzer wrote in 1995. “Anyone can be a publisher.” Soon, seemingly everyone was: Blogs, podcasts, and newsletters proliferated, fulfilling the web’s early promise of breaking down corporate barriers. “It is by now evident to everyone that the days of the press, especially major newspapers, playing the role of gatekeeper are gone,” The Washington Post lamented in 1998. The Post turned out to be one of the few survivors. Most publishing concerns discovered that their gatekeeper status was based not on the content they created, but the printing presses and delivery trucks they used to distribute it. When the web made distribution free, content became abundant. You no longer had to wait for the newspaper to be delivered; whatever information you wanted was available online, whenever you wanted it. This created a new problem: discovery. Amid the explosion of content, people needed a way to find what they wanted. At first, portals like “Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web” manually curated links to websites for us. As the links proliferated, content became overabundant, making attention the scarce resource. The companies that could aggregate the most users — and match them with the limitless supply of content — became the gatekeepers of the internet: Facebook, Google, Netflix. Before the internet, the hardest problem was getting content to users: It required delivery trucks, TV stations, and movie theaters. After the internet, the hardest problem was getting the users. The power of the internet’s new gatekeepers, Ben Thompson explains , comes from controlling the users. Once an aggregator amasses sufficient demand, content suppliers have to come to them on their terms “even though they hate it.” This is Thompson’s Aggregation Theory , which he used to explain the power dynamics of the second era of the world wide web. Now, however, we’re entering a third era — an agentic one. The second era began when the web made viewing content on the internet abundant. The third era began when Muse.ai made doing things on the internet abundant. The web made information abundant, but getting things done remained laborious. To book a flight, order groceries, or file a form, you still had to find the right website or app for the task, log on, and do a lot of clicking and typing. As of September 8, however, a Muse agent can do that for you. Just give it your login details and it can navigate the web on your behalf. Here’s a live shot of mine filing an insurance claim that I wouldn’t have otherwise have bothered with: I got $198 back! Amazing. And instructive. “This is a replay of what happened with websites,” Thompson says . “What is happening with agents is that the ability to do stuff is becoming abundant.” Websites made content abundant, which created a new set of gatekeepers — the tech giants that aggregated our attention by solving the problem of discovery. The new problem to solve, Thompson says, is “inspiration:” figuring out what to have our agents do when they can do almost anything. “The companies who solve inspiration will gain power over every entity that has things that need to be done.” One thing we might be inspired to do is start a bank run. “Muse and similar agentic AI assistants could soon sweep household cash automatically into accounts paying 3.3% to 5.0%, instead of the 0.1% national average on checking accounts,” economist Torsten Slok predicts . “If every household used AI agents to optimize the return on their cash balances,” Slok adds, “banks could lose a large share of the cheap deposits they rely on to make loans, which would be a problem for the entire financial system.” Slok hinted this could cause the ultimate bank problem with the title of his short note: “Is an agentic bank run coming?” The answer is almost certainly not. I, for example, will not be asking Muse to sweep the checking account at my bank into a fintech for the sake of 3 or 4% of additional yield. That money is working capital, not investment capital and I don’t need to optimize it. And even if I did, I wouldn’t ask a fallible, possibly misaligned AI agent to do it for me. However cute and cuddly the avatar, I’ll continue to use my banking apps myself, thank you very much. But there are plenty of apps and websites I will give an agent access to. Like my fantasy baseball one, for example. If my second baseman gets hurt next season, I won’t be opening the CBS Sports app to search for a replacement. I’ll ask Muse to log on to the app and do it for me. Along with a lot of other things. Just as Google and Facebook became the interface to the web’s abundant content, agents will become the interface to the web’s abundant capabilities. This, Thompson concludes, is the new — and ultimate — prize in technology: becoming the interface between us and everything we want to do online. — Byron Gilliam Brought to you by: Meridian 2026 is Stellar's annual gathering for the institutions, fintechs, and developers putting financial infrastructure onchain. Join them October 28-29 at Convento do Beato in Lisbon for two days on tokenization, payments, and what it takes to run them in production. Register today with Blockworks10 for 10% off. Update your email preferences or unsubscribe here © 2026 Blockworks 133 W 19TH ST New York, New York 10011, United States

SpaceX's biggest rocket reached orbit for the first time... September 29, 2026 Presented By Well, hello. We, a newsletter that is not actually affiliated in any way with selling coffee, would like to wish you a very happy National Coffee Day. And since we’re not in the coffee biz, we have no problem sharing these deals to help you get what we hope is your second-favorite morning brew today. —Dave Lozo, Molly Liebergall, Matty Merritt, Neal Freyman, Abby Rubenstein In today’s newsletter, we’ll get into: Nvidia’s answer for rogue AI SpaceX’s Starship launch The work tool your coworkers are probably paying for themselves Markets Nasdaq 26,820.38 -0.92% S&P 7,683.69 -0.77% Dow 51,481.51 -0.67% 10-Year 5.240% +6.0 bps Bitcoin $83,413.9 -1.49% MongoDB $334.68 -18.46% Data is provided by *Stock data as of market close, cryptocurrency data as of 5:30pm ET. Here's what these numbers mean. Markets: Stocks took inspiration from the season and were in fall mode yesterday, dipping as Treasury bond yields and oil prices continued to rise. Stock spotlight: Database provider MongoDB plummeted when investors learned that Meta had lured its CEO to come run its enterprise platform. SHELL GAME Has Nvidia solved the rogue AI hacking problem? Niv Bavarsky Nvidia has decided the only thing that can stop bad AI is good AI. In the wake of rogue AI models breaking into systems more easily than Angelina Jolie in Hackers , the chipmaker announced a new AI security system called OpenShell to act as a safeguard against your AI breaking any rules. The system’s unveiling comes two weeks after tech leaders, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, called for developers to slow things down and asked for more government regulation. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang disagreed and told CNN: “If they believe their company is out of control, then get the company under control.” And here’s how, says Nvidia OpenShell has two layers—that’s five fewer layers than a Taco Bell burrito—and is an open-source software system that any company can adopt, according to Nvidia. The semiconductor giant said OpenShell would have prevented OpenAI’s attack on the AI platform Hugging Face (which Nvidia bought for $13 billion earlier this month). Here’s how the software works: The first layer runs AI agents in a “sandbox,” the virtual space where they can be tested. Testers can define what the agent can access (e.g., networks, files). The extra layer is a program called Sentry that can “quarantine a suspicious agent in milliseconds,” according to Nvidia’s vice president of enterprise AI, Justin Boitano. Keeping it 100: Nvidia said more than 100 organizations are already using the platform, including Microsoft, Perplexity, and JPMorgan Chase. But AI safety concerns remain. The chorus of industry insiders asking for more oversight into self-improving AI got a little louder yesterday. Leaders and researchers from Anthropic, OpenAI, Meta, and Microsoft implored policymakers to safeguard the rapidly advancing technology in a paper signed by 20+ people. Meanwhile, OpenAI said yesterday that it would not release its GPT-6.1 Astra model due to security concerns. Tech leaders, including the CEOs of Nvidia, Anthropic, and Meta are expected to meet with President Trump today. Shelling out money: Nvidia also announced yesterday that it’s buying back another $150 billion of its stock, bringing the total amount it’s authorized to buy back to $235 billion. It’s the biggest corporate repurchase ever, according to the company. The previous record was held by Apple, which conducted a $110 billion buyback in 2024. —DL Sponsored By FinanceBuzz Is your car insurance getting…expensive? When was the last time you reviewed your auto insurance coverage? Auto insurance needs change over time, as do vehicle values, driving habits, and carrier policy options. If you’ve had the same policy for a while, taking a few minutes to explore what else is available in your area could reveal significant opportunities to adjust your monthly budget. In fact, drivers who take the time to compare top options could save up to $600 per year when they switch to a policy that better fits their current situation. You don’t need to spend hours navigating complicated paperwork to check your options. Using a quick online tool , you can easily compare top insurance choices side by side. Simply enter your zip code and basic vehicle information to start shopping for a policy that suits your budget. Try it out . World Tour de headlines Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images 🏗️ Trump announces $15 billion steel plant. Minnesota-based Mesabi Metallics plans to invest $15 billion to build the largest steel plant in US history in Iowa, the president said from the Oval Office yesterday. The iron ore will come from a recently opened mine in Minnesota, and the company told CNBC that the project would include “100% American steel: mined, melted, and poured in Minnesota and Iowa.” The announcement comes after President Trump imposed 50% tariffs on steel imports, which critics have blamed for driving up prices but the US steel industry has praised. 🚘 Trump admin scraps fuel-economy standards meant to boost EVs. The Transportation Department issued a final rule yesterday rolling back tough Biden-era fuel-economy standards for vehicles that run on gasoline. The move to nix the rules, which were aimed at getting automakers to focus on more environmentally friendly, fuel-efficient vehicles, comes as the war in Iran has sent gas prices soaring. The new regulations require cars to get 34.5 miles a gallon by the 2031 model year, down from the 50.4 miles under the old standard. The administration says the change will make new cars cheaper by making them less expensive to produce, but critics, including environmental groups, say these savings won’t be enough to offset high fuel costs. Car companies had pushed for the change, arguing that the old standard would force them to make EVs that the public doesn’t want. ✈️ S