October’s hike faded, and the altcoin book still refused to move as one trade. Yields hit a 24-year high, then Bitcoin cleared $85,000. October’s hike faded, and the altcoin book still refused to move as one trade. Oct 2 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 The October hike just lost the room, and crypto did not trade it as one market. The 10-year touched 5.34% on Thursday, the highest since 2002, then eased toward 5.23% as buyers finally showed up. October rate hike odds fell from about 70% a week ago to the high teens after the jobs print. December is still priced. Oil prices are the other half of that relief. Brent slipped back around $100 after reports that Europe may release diesel stocks, even as the Gulf buildup keeps the war premium alive. Equities are not celebrating. Stocks bounced with futures and still look like they are following duration. Inside crypto the split is sharper than the macro. Bitcoin cleared the $85,000 sell wall and is holding the mid-$80,000s. Altcoin season indexes disagree because they are measuring different baskets. One leg has revenue and buybacks. The other is a long tail of more than 62 million tokens. 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 The Hike Can Wait. The War Premium Cannot. The bond market finally got a reason to pause, and it was not a truce. Jefferson said future moves should wait on the data. Williams said there is no need for urgency, while still leaving the door open to one more increase later this year. That is why the front end rallied. The 2-year yield fell about 10 basis points overnight. The long end only eased. It did not break. The jobs report did the rest of the work. A 29,000 print against an estimate near 90,000 is not a growth boom. Softer August PCE, at 3.4% headline and 3.0% core, had already taken the edge off the inflation scare. Together they pushed October hike odds from a dominant bet to a minority one. CME FedWatch is near 17% for a hike. A week ago that number was close to 70%. Our desk had the no-change case in the mid-70s even before payrolls. Geopolitical risk is why yields did not collapse. That mix hurts the wrong assets first. Rate-sensitive equities and long-duration semiconductor stocks need the discount rate to fall, not merely to stop rising. A paused October hike is not a pivot. The equity tape knows it. 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 . Bitcoin Cleared the Wall. The Alt Index Did Not. Start with the Bitcoin tape, because it is cleaner than the altcoin argument. Buyers took out the $85,000 sell wall after almost a week of failed tests. Data Reads that the remaining ask liquidity above has thinned. Price is holding the mid-$80,000s, with a session high near $86,900. On-chain data says long-term holders are not distributing into this recovery. Realized profit from that cohort has stayed light off the bottom. They look like they want higher prices, not an exit. Flows match the structure, with one wobble. Spot Bitcoin ETFs took in about $2.4 billion in the week through September 25, then leaked $149 million on September 30 and flipped back to about $103 million of inflows on October 1. Cumulative net inflows sit near $57.6 billion. Assets are about $109 billion. The streak is no longer perfect. The bid is not gone. Willy Woo’s long-run point still holds in our work: Bitcoin has not lost to stocks over any completed four-year hold, even from a cycle top. That is a holding argument, not a timing one. The altcoin question is where crypto market analysis usually goes wrong. Blockchain Center’s index is at 53, neutral, and explicitly not altcoin season. A third desk gauge we track is flashing euphoria. Same week, three answers. The gap is the basket. One index averages the top of the market. Another lets a handful of winners set the tone. Neither is the long tail. Jamie Coutts’s cut of the top 100 is the same pointlike tokenomics are improving where teams bother to pay holders. Our charts have altcoins ahead of the 2022 cycle at the same number of days off the bottom, and ETH/BTC breaking a nine-year downtrend. Bitcoin dominance was elevated at this cycle’s July low. That is a setup for a selective altcoin cycle, not a blanket one. The buyback leg is where the choice is already visible. Pump.fun has bought and burned roughly $450 million to $460 million of PUMP. Half of revenue is locked into that burn. Fees and volume are back near the pre- STONK has bought back about 19% of supply. Revenue recovered after the account-suspension FUD. Price has not. Buybacks are more aggressive against a lower token. Pons is the laggard. Robinhood Chain volume has not matched Solana, and Pons needs a runner. A social-app tease is not a revenue print. Launchpad deployment and volume are picking up again on the Dune wars dashboard. That is activity, not quality. The race to burn half the supply is STONK, then Pons, then Pump on the desk’s tracker. We care more about the dollars than the leaderboard. Policy is the plumbing under the upper leg. On October 1 the SEC proposed a real custody framework for crypto at advisers and funds, including a path for self-custody when no qualified custodian exists and a lane for state-chartered trust companies. That does not ignite the long tail. It makes the assets institutions can actually hold easi

Stocks are in fear, and crypto is already sorting winners from the rest. 🚨5 Smart Setups To Watch as Bitcoin cleared $85,000 Stocks are in fear, and crypto is already sorting winners from the rest. Oct 2 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 week is closing on a jobs miss, not a truce. Growth cooled, the October hike got pushed, and the long end only eased after touching a 24-year high. Equities followed the bonds. They did not lead them. Oil came off the spike and never really cleared. Europe is talking about releasing diesel stocks, the Gulf buildup is still there, and Iran still has no deal. Crude is cheaper than Thursday. It is not calm, and it is not done shoving yields around. Bitcoin reclaimed the mid-$80,000s after clearing the sell wall. ETFs flipped back to inflows after one day of selling. Crypto is trading the same stack as stocks: a long end that will not fully ease, a war that can reprice oil before the open, and a bid that is still picky. Here is what we are watching. Poll of the Day ( Presented by Rain Trade ) 🎯 POLL Will the Fed hike rates again in October? ⏸️ Hold / Pause 📈 Hike again 📉 Rate cut Today’s Charts: Chart #1 – Just(JSTUSDT) 1-Day Chart #2 – Skycoin(SKYUSDT) 1-Day Chart #3 – XDC Network(XDCUSDT) 1-Day Chart #4 – Injective(INJUSDT) 1-Day Chart #5 – Accenture(ACN) 1-Day Chart #1 – Just(JSTUSDT) 1-Day Chartist: Kapoor (For the chart screenshot, ) JUST is confirming an impulsive multi-month trend continuation out of its summer accumulation floor, absorbing pullbacks above the $0.11775 horizontal support pivot to trade near $0.12694 on the daily timeframe. Built as the foundational decentralized finance (DeFi) and lending ecosystem on the TRON network, JUST operates a dual-token architecture powering decentralized stablecoin issuance (USDJ) via collateralized debt positions (CDPs) alongside JustLend DAO money markets, with JST serving as the primary governance token, stability fee settlement asset, and staking utility token. This long trade setup targets an upward expansion toward the $0.14210 overhead resistance target as long as the $0.10846–$0.11775 support base holds. Trade Levels: Entry: $0.117 Stop Loss: $0.108 Take Profit Levels (TP): TP1: $0.142 Powerful narratives create powerful moves. With 247 Research , you get the insights to be early to the biggest trends in crypto. Chart #2 – Skycoin(SKYUSDT) 1-Day Chartist: Kapoor (For the chart screenshot, ) Skycoin has initiated an impulsive continuation rally out of a multi-month accumulation floor, breaking above the $0.08321 horizontal pivot shelf to print $0.09300 on the daily timeframe. Designed as an alternative decentralized ecosystem and hardware-supported mesh networking architecture, the project utilizes the custom Obelisk "Web-of-Trust" consensus mechanism to eliminate traditional proof-of-work mining, paired with native CoinJoin transaction mixing and Skywire peer-to-peer encrypted mesh bandwidth routing powered by Skyminers. This long trade setup targets an upward expansion toward the $0.10831 overhead resistance target as long as the $0.07452–$0.08321 support base holds. Trade Levels: Entry: $0.083 Stop Loss: $0.074 Take Profit Levels (TP): TP1: $0.108 Chart #3 – XDC Network(XDCUSDT) 1-Day Chartist: Kapoor (For the chart screenshot, ) XDC Network is executing a bullish breakout retest following an extended multi-month accumulation base, absorbing pullbacks above the $0.031899 horizontal structural pivot to trade near $0.034709 on the daily timeframe. Built as an enterprise-grade, EVM-compatible hybrid blockchain powered by delegated proof-of-stake (XDPoS) consensus, XDC Network specializes in global trade finance, cross-border payments, and real-world asset (RWA) tokenization, conforming natively to ISO 20022 messaging standards to bridge traditional banking rails with decentralized settlement infrastructure. This long trade setup targets an upward expansion toward the $0.050838 overhead resistance target as long as the $0.026555–$0.031899 support base holds. Trade Levels: Entry: $ 0.031 Stop Loss: $0.026 Take Profit Levels (TP): TP1: $0.050 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 #4 – Injective(INJUSDT) 1-Day Chartist: Kapoor (For the chart screenshot, ) Injective is executing an ascending pullback retest following an aggressive multi-month trend expansion out of its summer base, absorbing sell-side liquidity along dynamic trendline support above the $6.293 horizontal pivot shelf to trade near $7.400 on the daily timeframe. Built as a sector-specific Layer-1 blockchain optimized for decentralized finance, Injective leverages Cosmos SDK and Tendermint consensus to provide protocol-level financial primitives—including fully decentralized on-chain order books, zero gas front-running resistance, and native cross-chain interoperability with Ethereum, Solana, and IBC-enabled networks. This long trade setup targets an upward expansion toward the $9.335 overhead resistance target as long as the $5.063–$6.293 support base holds. Trade Levels: Entry: $6.2 Stop Loss: $5.0 Take Profit Levels (TP): TP1: $9.3 Chart #5 – Accenture(ACN) 1-Day Chartist: Kapoor (For the chart screenshot, ) (ACN refers to the stock of company Accenture and not a cryptocurrency.) Accenture is consolidating along an ascending structural retest trajectory following an impulsive summer recovery from its cyclical low, holding constructive positioning above the $186.34 horizontal pivot shelf to trade near $202.89 on the daily timeframe. As a global management consu

If so, how is ETH worth ~$326B?? 🥛 Does revenue really matter? 🤔 If so, how is ETH worth ~$326B?? Chevy Cassar GM. This is Milk Road, the crypto newsletter that's more dependable than a validator with 100% uptime. Here’s what we’ve got for you today: ✍️ Crypto is priced like it has no revenue. 🎙️ The Milk Road Show: Bitwise x Base: How Crypto Could 2,000x Sooner Than Anyone Expects . 🍪 NEAR Intents lost $3.8M to a bridge exploit. Prices as of 2:00 p.m. ET. Powered by CoinGecko. CRYPTO IS PRICED LIKE IT HAS NO REVENUE 🧾 Ethereum is worth ~$326B. Over the past 12 months, it brought in ~$64M in chain revenue, according to DefiLlama. That's ~5,100x revenue (i.e. at that pace, it would take ~5,100 years of revenue to add up to what ETH is worth today). … and most of the other big chains aren't far behind: Source: DeFiLlama For chains, DefiLlama's "revenue" only includes fees that get burned or sent to the chain's treasury. The payouts to validators (the operators who secure the network) don't count. For Ethereum, revenue = ETH burned (permanently destroyed). And Ethereum burns very little by design. Its 2024 Dencun upgrade made it super cheap for L2s to use Ethereum, so most of the fees now stay with the L2s. Robinhood Chain is a good example: In its first two weeks, Robinhood Chain (built with Arbitrum's tech) grossed ~$816K in fees: Robinhood kept ~89%. Arbitrum took ~10%. Ethereum got $1,538 (~0.15%). Which leaves a question for anyone holding ETH: If Ethereum barely gets paid for the activity it hosts, what exactly is the market paying ~$326B for... What’re people buying Ethereum for? Depends who you ask, because the two main camps disagree on what ETH even is. Lorenzo Valente (director of research at ARK Invest) laid out both sides himself. If you think ETH is money, Robinhood building on Ethereum is very bullish (more activity, more ETH used as collateral, more demand for ETH). If you think ETH is a revenue asset, on the other hand, it's the bear case. Fundstrat's Tom Lee sits in the money camp. As John explained it in a PRO post last month, Tom compares ETH to scarce land under a growing city. The buildings get torn down and rebuilt, but the land keeps getting more valuable as activity piles up on top of it. John's with Tom on this one, and his view is that modeling ETH like a software company "will keep looking disappointing for a while." (He's also self-aware about it. The same post ends with ETH becoming one of the best assets of all time, "either that or it's worth like twenty bucks.") But for apps built on Ethereum, revenue is the whole case. Greg Viverito (general partner at TAG Capital) made that point on The Milk Road Show last week. For a while, he said, you could count the protocols earning revenue and passing it to token holders on one hand. But the ones that did get paid stood out fast, kicking off the revenue meta. Source: DeFiLlama Hyperliquid kept ~12x more revenue than Ethereum burned last month, at ~1/16th of the market cap. That's the same filter John uses on his app picks: UNI turned on its fee switch, so a slice of trading fees now buys back and burns UNI. AERO sends all of its protocol revenue to holders who lock up their tokens. Revenue only helps holders if it outpaces the new tokens a protocol hands out as rewards (which dilute everyone else). But if you pick them right, they can pay off. E.g. check out John’s recent picks: UNI: +85% since late August. AERO: +68% since Aug 31. SKY: +56% since late June. (Btw - PRO members get to see every one of John's trades, and the reasoning behind them, the moment he buys.) So where does that leave us? We essentially have two classes of crypto tokens: The land (aka: the ecosystem tokens that everyone builds on, like Ethereum). The buildings (aka: the rent generating apps built within those ecosystems, like Uniswap and Sky). The takeaway: Just because a token doesn’t pull in crazy revenues doesn’t mean it can’t/won’t catch a bid. (Hell - look at ETH over the past decade.) 👇 Source: TradingView CALLING ALL CRYPTO NERDS 🥛 If you wake up and check Bitcoin before the weather, spend too much time on Crypto Twitter, and can actually write, we might have a job for you. Milk Road is looking for a crypto-focused writer/content creator to join the team. Come be bullish with us BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD 🍪 Ondo just launched the first three portfolios powered by BlackRock . Curated strategies, delivered as single onchain tokens.** Bitcoin just posted Q3 returns of 42.7% , its best quarter since 2017. NEAR Intents lost $3.8M to a bridge exploit , with the bug limited to USDT bridged from the BNB chain. Cloudflare launched a gateway letting AI agents pay for web content in USDC, settled on Base via Coinbase's x402. **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

The old normal Byron Gilliam “Nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” — William Shakespeare, Hamlet Friday charts: The old normal In 1980, The Washington Post reported how quickly rising mortgage rates were pricing borrowers out of the housing market: “I don't think it really hit home until this week,” said Cheryl Insko, vice president for mortgage loans for Arlington-Fairfax Savings and Loan, which increased its rate to 17 percent this week. “When people found out that the largest banks were raising their rates to discourage loans, they realized that they just couldn't get the 13 percent loans that they could a few months ago. It hit home that they couldn't afford it and they're deciding not to buy." Imagine a 13% mortgage seeming like a good deal! A few months later it seemed like an even better one: In October 1981, the cost of a 30-year mortgage hit an eye-watering 18.5%. At that rate it cost about $12,000 a year to service a mortgage on a $70,000 house (the median cost of a house at the time). If you could even get a mortgage, that is. Because most couldn't, at any price. The Post also reported that 40% of the mortgage lenders it surveyed had stopped making loans entirely. Another 12% only offered new loans to existing customers. Why would banks turn away customers willing to pay them 18.5%? "We don't have the money to lend," a bank lender told The Post. Banks were out of money because they were rapidly losing deposits to money market funds, where assets under management surged past $100 billion for the first time in 1980. It’s easy to see why. In 1981, a savings account at a bank paid 5.25% (the maximum allowed by law) — more than six percentage points below the rate of inflation (as high as 13.6% in 1980). Savers were therefore switching to money market funds, which paid an amazing 15.7%, according to the 1980 Post article — three times more than a bank account. Even at that rate, however, savers were probably losing purchasing power after taxes. But it seemed like the only place to hide — and certainly preferable to paying 18% or more for a mortgage. It wasn’t. 1980 turned out to be the exact moment to have your savings in almost anything other than a money market fund — it was the start of a multi-decade march lower for interest rates. Before a 30-year mortgage taken in 1981was paid off in full, interest rates would fall all the way to 0%. Or lower! In 2009, Warren Buffett noted that Berkshire Hathaway had sold $5,000,000 of Treasury bills for $5,000,090.07 just a few months before the loan was due to be paid back. In other words, interest rates were negative: Someone had effectively paid $90.07 for the privilege of lending $5 million to the government. That shouldn’t really happen. Who pays to lend someone money?? At the time, it seemed like a temporary anomaly born of the Great Financial Crisis. “I’m not sure you’ll see that again in your lifetime,” Buffett said. But a decade later, fixed-income investors were lending to corporations at negative rates, too, like Henkel and Sanofi. In Denmark, even homebuyers could borrow below zero. A few decades after banks were refusing to lend at any price, some were paying people to borrow. Incredible. Now, things seem to be normalizing. Mortgage rates hit 7.3% this week, up from 3% five years ago. The yield on 30-year Treasurys hit 5.6%, a 25-year high. Scary stuff, relative to recent history — but hardly a disaster. Mortgage rates were above 7% for most of the 1990s, after all, and people still bought houses. But historically normal interest rates will take some getting used to for both markets and the economy. It’s been a long time since 13% seemed like a bargain. Let’s check the charts. Zoom out: Mortgage rates inspired some dramatic headlines this week, but today’s 7.30% average only seems high relative to the last 15 years or so. Zoom in: As measured by the market for inflation-indexed Treasurys (which might not be the best way to measure it), the market has not changed its expectations for inflation. For real? What has changed is the real return that investors in long-term US debt are demanding. Current prices suggest that today’s 5.6% yield on 30-year Treasurys, held to maturity, will grow your purchasing power by 3.3% a year. Pretty good! (If it really does work out that way, which it probably won’t.) Blue above black is bad: This is a little overloaded, but worth spending a minute on because Robin Brooks says it's evidence that the global selloff in government bonds could get a lot worse: “A debt crisis always starts in the most vulnerable places. That's what's happening now. Look at how France's 10-year yield [the blue line] has decoupled above the global rise in yields [the black line].” Other countries with the blue line perilously above the black line include Italy and — gulp — the US. Can AI do something? The US national debt has risen above 100% of GDP for the first time since World War II. There seems little prospect of the government either spending less or taxing more. The only other option is for the economy to grow faster than the debt. The AI bet: A new study estimates that the AI buildout will cost 3.63% of GDP between 2025 and 2032 — far more than even the 19th-century investment in railroads. Crowding out? AI-related borrowers have accounted for nearly 25% of all corporate bond issuance in 2026, up from less than 5% in 2024. This is contributing to the bond selloff because fixed-income investors only have so much money to lend. Paul Krugman thinks AI borrowing and the war in Iran are the two main drivers of higher bond yields. Trend change? Data from Ramp suggests that spending on AI tokens is down vs. last week and off its highs from a few weeks ago. But only because OpenAI and Anthropic may be starting a price war. Token volumes continue to rise. Token deflation: Data from Coatue shows that the cost of AI inference (tokens, basically) has been falling by 50% per quarter since 2023 — far faster than new

What do this year's redemption requests actually tell us? October 2, 2026 PRESENTED BY Good morning. For most of their history, private investments weren’t built for the individual, with big minimums, no access to your capital until the manager liquidated, and limited visibility into what is actually being owned standing in the way. Then the industry built an entrance for everyone else in the form of semi-liquid funds, now a $600 billion business. This year really put that structure to the test. Redemption requests picked up, and investors learned that these funds only let so much money out at once. Which raises a question advisors have to answer for their clients: is that limit a defect, or the reason the whole thing works? We spoke with Mark Gatto, co-founder and co-CEO of CION Investments, at Future Proof 2026 to get his take on this and more. Here are the highlights from our conversation. PRESENTED BY CION INVESTMENTS What to Consider Before Buying a Semi-Liquid Fund Photo via Damon Butler The Daily Upside: Semi-liquid funds have grown into a $600 billion category fairly quickly. What’s behind that growth? Historically, alternatives were products that were exclusively for institutions and ultra high net worth individuals. The structure really wasn’t suitable for the individual. You had high minimums, they were fully illiquid, so your money would be locked up for seven to 10 years, and they were relatively opaque. Then you have the advent of the BDC, the business development company, you have your closed-end tender offer funds, and you have interval funds that allow individual investors in the private wealth channel to access the same exposure, but in a wrapper that makes sense for them. Low minimums, transparency because these are mostly registered products with reporting requirements, not unlike a public company, and probably most importantly, some access to your capital. It’s not full access, and nor do you want it to be, because you want the manager to be able to invest in a way that you can capitalize on the liquidity premium and get an enhanced yield. That’s why you’re doing it. Besides traditional stocks and bonds, investors need other types of products to meet their long-term objectives. The Daily Upside: Redemptions have been a big story this year. Is that a strain on the category, or is everything working as intended? I think it’s a positive thing. These products were never intended to give full liquidity. That cap is really a feature. I think it’s good that it happened now, so people understand it more. Advisors and their clients get to see how it works in practice, and nothing dramatic has happened in the asset classes. A lot of it was a function of people thinking we were in a down credit cycle, that you’d see enhanced defaults, that AI was going to disrupt everything. People panicked. The good thing here is you couldn’t over-panic, because there was this feature. I’m not going to call it a gate or any other term the media uses. It’s a feature in these funds that believe in the long-term viability of the strategy. The Daily Upside: When there’s a surge in redemption requests, walk me through what that process looks like. Most interval funds provide a window to tender shares back to the fund, limited to 5% per quarter. If you get 5% or less, basically everybody gets 100% of their capital back. If you got 10% redemption requests, then everybody gets 50% of their money back. So even though a 10% request sounds like you’re not going to get all your money, at the end of the day you still got 50% of it back. Compare that to a traditional alternative, where you have no opportunity to get any of your money out until the life cycle of the fund is completed and the manager liquidates. If you can get access to your capital, albeit limited, to me that’s a much better proposition. The Daily Upside: What should advisors consider when they’re selecting a manager or a strategy? Track record is important, but you have to make sure it lends itself to what they’re trying to accomplish in the semi-liquid wrapper. A manager with great returns who could sit around at their leisure and find the best deals when they were available may not be a great manager in a fund where capital’s being raised every day. Then look at the asset mix. Are these the types of assets that work well in that wrapper? You have to give liquidity on a quarterly basis, so are they convertible to cash in a relatively short period of time? Is there a satellite strategy being used to support the tender program, and is the manager good at that satellite strategy? And then there’s service. You need somebody who can give you the information you need to educate your client, to articulate what’s happening, to calm them down when markets are turbulent. A lot of people overlook that. They look at the manager and the track record and they stop there. The Daily Upside: What’s next for the category? You’re going to see another influx of product coming in, so there needs to be some sorting out of the winners and the losers. There are some really good funds and some really good managers out there, but this is not a space where everybody can hang a shingle and be relevant. What we don’t want is to blow up from a marginal manager who doesn’t know what they’re doing and have that paint the whole industry with a bad reputation. There’s also a lot of room for growth, because there’s a whole swath of advisors who aren’t using these products currently, since they’re apprehensive and don’t really understand them. You’re going to see more education pushed into the channel, more uptake, more adoption, and then increased demand. Watch the full Q&A with Mark Gatto. Our Other Newsletters The Daily Upside | ETF Upside | Retirement Upside | CFO Upside 55 Union Place, #253 Summit, NJ 07901 Copyright © 2026 The Daily Upside, LLC All rights reserved.

Plus: Volatility watch | Friday, October 02, 2026 Presented By Capital One Axios Markets By Emily Peck and Matt Phillips · Oct 02, 2026 🎉 It's Friday! Let's party as only we can at Markets, by writing about bonds! They've gotten sexy, you guys. We pinky promise. This morning we anxiously await the September employment report. S&P 500 futures are up slightly, which folks are chalking up to oil prices slipping below $100 a barrel on Brent crude, the global benchmark. Let's do this! 1,068 words, a 4-minute read. 1 big thing: Getting technical about those yields By Emily Peck Data: Financial Modeling Prep ; Chart: Emily Peck/Axios Technical mechanics are one factor behind the spike in rates that has the typically boring government bond markets on edge — and a reason we might be living in a higher interest rate world for a while. Why it matters: The Treasury market is the plumbing of the world economy and, much like the pipes in your house, when it gets jammed up you have to pay attention. By the numbers: The interest rate on the 10-year Treasury note touched levels last seen in 2002 on Thursday, before easing back to 5.24%, and 30-year bonds are also sitting at multi-decade highs. The average rate on the 30-year mortgage, which tracks the 10-year Treasury, surged to 7.28% up from 7.03% last week, Freddie Mac said Thursday. The surge in rates on U.S. Treasuries is feeding on itself as institutional investors that typically buy government debt have instead been selling, forcing rates up further. What they're saying: "The shizzle has hit the fan," says Yesha Yadav, a professor of law at Vanderbilt who specializes in Treasuries market structure. Between the lines: Big macro forces — war in Iran — and rising deficits have driven rates higher, but another part of what's happening is a more technical matter of supply and demand. Rising rates have turned some typical buyers of Treasury bonds — particularly hedge funds and mortgage REITs — into sellers. That means there is less demand for the bonds, so prices fall. And when prices on bonds fall, the interest rates those bonds pay to investors rise. The rub: When rates rise, there's more selling. Zoom out: "It's almost like you're running like a hamster just to stay at the same place," Priya Misra, a portfolio manager at JPMorgan Asset Management, tells Axios. "If nothing else happens this thing feeds on itself," she says. The intrigue: The big driver of this selling is coming from institutional investors that hold mortgage bonds. When rates rise fast, these bond holders must change the way they hedge their investments, often by selling Treasuries or other derivatives. "We're dealing with that on a daily basis," says Misra. This mortgage convexity dynamic is the main technical factor behind the sell-off , says Amrut Nashikkar, head of interest rate derivatives research at Barclays. The Fed was once the biggest buyer of mortgage bonds, and it didn't hedge its interest rate risk. But it stepped back from the market in 2022, and more of those bonds now sit with private investors who do hedge. What we're watching: Some market observers also suspect hedge funds may be unwinding what's known as the "basis trade," a way to profit on the difference between the price of an actual Treasury bond and a future on that bond. Though the evidence there is not yet clear. Yes, but: Strong economic growth in the U.S. is also pushing up rates. The dynamics are murky because we're talking about a $32 trillion secondary market. "You don't know in real time how things are changing hands," says Robin Brooks, an economist at the Brookings Institution. "The only thing we know is that in aggregate, supply is greater than demand." The big picture: Over the past several years, the massive Treasury market has changed. Foreign governments have pulled back on buying, and private investors now make up a bigger share of the market. That means you're likely to see more gyrations and higher rates in the future. What's happening now "is a symptom of that structural change," says Nashikkar. A MESSAGE FROM CAPITAL ONE How resident services enhance affordable housing Affordable housing properties with resident services generated 26% higher net operating income than those without, according to new research. The impact: That can mean additional income to reinvest in the property and support services for residents. Learn more. 2. ⚡️ Bond market gets jiggy By Matt Phillips Data: S&P Capital IQ; Chart: Axios/Matt Phillips Equity investors expect big volatility , and Treasury investors typically don't. But like so much else in the current market , that truism has been flipped on its head. Why it matters: Analysts have flagged jagged trading in the Treasury market — which translates into sharp moves in interest rates — as a potential risk for stocks. Why does the bond market affect stocks? Good question! Here are few theories — in no particular order. 🤔 Theory 1: Higher yields on super safe Treasury bonds mean investors can make more money on them. All else equal, they become more attractive compared to stocks. Et voilà, money flows from stocks to bonds, and stock prices fall. 🧐 Theory 2: Treasury yields are, basically, a key component in the denominator in the most widely used formulas used to value stocks. (The top number is expected earnings.) So, as a simple matter of math, when bond yields go up, the number the formula spits out gets smaller — again all else equal. That number is basically the estimate of what a stock is worth. And since that smaller number equals a lower price, and virtually everybody is making more or less the same calculation, they all decide stocks are worth less when rates rise. Et voilà, stock prices fall. 🤨 Theory 3: Treasury yields are the foundation for important borrowing costs across the economy. When they go up, costs rise for everybody and can eventually slow economic growth. Since the economy drives corporate profits, and corporate profits drive stock prices,

Plus: Accenture is surviving and thriving in the SaaSpocalypse. October 2, 2026 PRESENTED BY CFO UPSIDE Good morning and happy Friday. Call him the Artless Dodger. The UK’s financial services sector watchdog handed a lifetime ban to a former banker on Thursday, months after he pleaded guilty to fraud for dodging nearly £6,000 ($7,900) in train tickets. Joseph Molloy, who retired as head of passive equity at HSBC Asset Management last year, used false identities to obtain smart cards that he loaded with tickets for short trips at the start and end of the journey between his £2 million ($2.6 million) home and his office in London’s Canary Wharf district. This allowed him to carry out a type of scam known in the UK as “doughnutting,” where someone pays for quick treks from the first and last stations on their route, creating a “hole” in the middle of the trip where they ride without paying. On top of “doughnutting” over 700 times, Molloy obtained a government unemployment benefit under false pretenses so he could get 50% off tickets. A court handed him an 18- month suspended sentence, banned him from Southeastern rail for a year and ordered him to pay the train operator £5,000. That being less than the amount he allegedly scammed, maybe his dodge was artful after all … MARKETS S&P 500 7,666.45 ▲ +0.19% DJI 50,926.56 ▲ +0.04% ACN $212.30 ▲ +15.78% Stock data as of market close on October 1, 2026. MARKETS Appetite for US Bonds as Safe Haven Rebounds After Global Yields Spike Photo via JOHN ANGELILLO/UPI/Newscom There are bond markets outside of the US so frightening they make America look superlative by comparison. US Treasuries rebounded from an early sell-off Thursday, as decades-high yields on long-term government debt tempted an influx of buyers. Meanwhile, the allure of US government debt is strengthening with some money managers and retail investors, and traders signaled Thursday that they think Uncle Sam could provide safe haven from bond market tumult brewing elsewhere. Give Them a 60-40 Chance The yield on the 10-year Treasury note finished September with the biggest quarterly gain since 1994 and reached a 24-year high of 5.34% early Thursday. However, buyers quickly came calling after the initial selloff and the yield closed the day at 5.233%. A handful of supporting developments coalesced around their purchases. First, a new Institute for Supply Management report revealed that economic activity in the US manufacturing sector grew slower than expected in September. Cooling in the white-hot American economy could give the Federal Reserve cause to hold off on additional interest rate hikes, which would steady the value of Treasuries. Fed Vice Chairs Philip Jefferson and Michelle Bowman offered support for that narrative, suggesting policymakers had more wiggle room. Any delay in hikes would mean less short-term upward pressure on yields from Fed policy. Second, the global bond selloff reminded markets that US Treasuries are actually a safe haven. Look no further than France, where belt-tightening measures introduced in Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu’s latest budget on Thursday failed to ease the market’s concerns about ballooning deficits and a deteriorating fiscal outlook. The spread between 10-year government bond yields in France and Germany reached the widest since the euro area’s early 2010s sovereign debt crisis. With global economic uncertainty piling up, investors expressed a preference for US and German bonds, which are viewed as relatively risk-free. Against the backdrop of higher Treasury payouts, there’s also evidence more and more corners of the market are reassessing bonds: The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week that money managers are telling their clients to jump back into Treasuries and reawaken the classic 60-40 portfolio, arguing the high yields and cheap prices on long-term bonds are too sweet to miss out on. Halbert Hargrave Co-Chief Investment Officer Brian Spinelli told the paper “the biggest challenge is going to be psychological,” referring to investors still associating bonds with the near zero interest rate environment of the Covid era. A significant number of retail investors have gotten the message. JPMorgan noted in its latest weekly retail activity note that the iShares 20+Year Treasury bond ETF saw its largest inflows ever, indicating the 30-year bond yield is in the sweet spot as far as the new rush of retail traders are concerned. Home Evasion: Everything else aside, the turbulent waves caused by bond market mayhem are making potential homebuyers seasick. The average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage rate rose the most in four years this week to 7.28%, according to Freddie Mac data released on Thursday. Written by Sean Craig PRESENTED BY CFO UPSIDE We Saved You a Seat in the Boardroom Every major deal, restructuring, or operational shake-up gets decided behind a locked boardroom door. By the time it reaches you, it’s already been rewritten into a headline: strategic acquisition, resource realignment, restructuring for growth. The reasoning that actually drove finance leaders to the decision , the alternative that almost happened, and the tradeoffs debated late into the night all stay inside that room, out of the news. We’re launching CFO Upside to unlock that door and pull up a chair for you. Every week, you’ll get the thinking behind these moves and the latest news and intelligence shaping the finance function , ready for your own next big call. Start understanding the decisions moving more than just balance sheets. SEMICONDUCTORS TSMC Considers New Plant in Lone Star State Photo via Cheng-Chia Huang/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom TSMC doesn’t need everything to be bigger in Texas. These days it’ll take any increase in production capacity it can eke out. According to reports from Bloomberg and Reuters, the chip-printing king is considering a new multibillion-dollar campus in the Lone Star State in what would be its second production hub in the US in addit

Plus: Giving Boots the boot | Thursday, October 01, 2026 Axios Closer By Nathan Bomey · Oct 01, 2026 Thursday ✅. Today's newsletter is 763 words, a 3-minute read. 📈 The dashboard: The S&P 500 closed up 0.2%. Yields on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note — which had been at their highest level since 2002 — eased by about 5 basis points to 5.24%. 🔥 Today's stock spotlight: Mattel (+18.8%) shares closed at $15.04 after the company was reported to have recently been approached by Authentic Brands Group, which is weighing making an offer that could value the Barbie maker at more than $20 a share. 1 big thing: 🏠 7% sting Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios Mortgage rates spiked to their highest level in nearly three years, continuing their climb above the 7% threshold. 🧊 Why it matters: Housing sales were already slow due to a lack of inventory and elevated rates, creating a risk that the market could further its freeze. Zoom in: The weekly average 30-year fixed mortgage rate was 7.28% as of today, Freddie Mac reported . That's up 0.94 points from a year ago, and 0.25 points from last week. Mortgage rates closely track 10-year Treasury yields, which have risen by over 1.25 percentage points since the start of the Iran war in February. 📊 The impact: Mortgage applications are plunging. The Mortgage Bankers Association reported yesterday that applications during the week ended Sept. 25 fell 6% from a week earlier. And with rates at their highest point since November 2023, homebuyers are beginning to turn to adjustable-rate mortgages. ARMs made up 10.3% of mortgage applications in the most recent period, marking the highest point since October 2025, according to the MBA. 🏷️ What we're watching: There are early signs that rising rates could put downward pressure on prices as sellers look to attract buyers. "Softer market conditions and greater affordability pressures have contributed to increased pricing pressures across many of our markets," KB Home senior VP William Hollinger said last week on an earnings call, noting the home builder had "made pricing adjustments." 🔭 Reality check: Rates may not remain elevated for long. Capital Economics projects average 30-year fixed mortgage rates at 6.25% by the end of 2027, as energy prices fall and the Fed raises rates less aggressively than markets currently expect. Go deeper Bonus chart: Mortgage rates, then and now Data: Freddie Mac ; Chart: Pete Gannon/Axios 2. Sycamore could give Boots the boot Photo: Mike Kemp/In Pictures via Getty Images Private equity firm Sycamore Partners reportedly is in talks to sell British pharmacy chain Boots to part of the billionaire Weston family for around $9 billion (including debt), Axios' Dan Primack writes . 📊 Why it matters: Sycamore isn't wasting any time breaking up the Walgreens Boots Alliance, believing that it's worth less than the sum of its parts. Catch up quick: Sycamore gained control of Boots through last year's $24 billion takeover of Walgreens, which previously had acquired Boots from KKR and Stefano Pessina for around $22 billion via a multiyear process. Go deeper, via the WSJ : "Selling Boots at the price being discussed would be an early win for Sycamore, which is poised to make a sizable return on the sale. It would also allow the firm to focus on reviving Walgreens' U.S. operations." 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. 3. Other happenings Photo: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg via Getty Images 🚙 General Motors' third-quarter sales declined 5.5% amid a steep falloff in EVs, though the automaker pointed to a strong performance in both SUVs and full-size pickups. Its stock closed up 3%. ( WSJ ) 🤖 Anthropic is said to be looking to go public as soon as mid-November, with formal marketing of the deal potentially kicking off the week of Nov. 9. ( Bloomberg ) 💼 Microsoft executive Ryan Roslansky, who led the company's LinkedIn subsidiary from 2020 through April, is leaving at the end of the year. ( CNBC ) 4. 🥊 Round 2 Photo: Anti Fund co-founder Jake Paul. Source: Fayez Nureldine/AFP via Getty Images Jake Paul is back in the ring for another round as a VC. The YouTuber-turned-boxer's venture firm Anti Fund is seeking to raise $400 million for its second fund, according to a regulatory filing , Axios Pro Deals' Ryan Lawler reports . State of play: The target for Anti Fund II is more than 13 times the size of the firm's first venture fund, which closed less than a year ago. The first version of the fund counts firms like OpenAI, Modal and Anduril among its investments. 💭 Nathan's thought bubble: If investing comes as easily to Jake Paul as his fight with Mike Tyson, this should go very well. 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:

MCPs and debt stories Byron Gilliam “There is no season when such pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on, and produce so pleasant an effect on the feelings, as now in October.” — Nathaniel Hawthorne Thursday links: MCPs and debt stories Blockworks has an MCP One way to understand the significance of the Model Context Protocol (MCP) is to think about it as a progression of who can do what on the internet. First, the HTTP standard enabled humans to visually browse the web: Open Weather.com, for example, and see tomorrow’s forecast. Later, APIs allowed software to access the web: The app on your phone can ask Weather.com for tomorrow’s forecast. Now, the MCP standard allows LLMs to act on the web: “Hey agent: Check tomorrow’s forecast and if it’s sunny, send an email to my manager saying I’m not feeling well.” You, hard-working reader, would never do that, of course. But you might want your agent to check some crypto prices? If so, you could do that yourself by checking a website, thanks to HTTP. Or open an app on your phone that queries a database, thanks to APIs. As of recently, though, you can also ask an LLM. You probably won’t, though, because LLMs tend to hallucinate about things like that — unless they’re connected to a reliable source of data. This is what MCP is for. First developed by Anthropic in November 2024, the Model Context Protocol is a set of rules (hence “protocol”) that standardize how LLMs connect to external tools and sources of data. In whatever form you requested it. The magic of connecting an LLM to a reliable source of data is that you can do pretty much anything with it. Price charts, sure. But much more analytical stuff, too, like comparing the fundamentals of one token to another. (Yes, some tokens really do have fundamentals.) For example, I asked Claude to chart the net margins of the two largest onchain marketplaces for collectible trading cards: I chose to share this one because it’s not something you’d expect to see in traditional investing: Courtyard makes twice as much off its users as Collector Crypto does — for the exact same service. More importantly, connecting Claude to the Blockworks MCP makes me feel like I’m back in front of a Bloomberg terminal: all the data a trader could want and everything can be turned into a chart. Except this is better because it’s much easier to use: Just ask for what you want, in plain English, and the LLM will build it for you. Even if you ask for an entire trading terminal — like the one my colleague built with Claude. In 30 minutes. Connected to an MCP, your agent can just do stuff. Amazing. More Wigglesworth In my review yesterday, I focused on the colorful characters of Robin Wigglesworth’s new book, “A Fabulous Debt.” But that left out a lot of great anecdotes that deserve to be shared. Like a bond offering made to London investors at the height of the 1820s investing bubble — a £1 million loan on behalf of the “Quicapouse” tribe of the Mississippi. The bankers said the money would be repaid over 700 years, which seems like a long time. Also, it would be paid “in shipments of wild geese,” Wigglesworth notes, “which would supposedly feather British beds and feed its masses.” The Quicapouse (either fictional or an alternate spelling of Kickapoo, I’m not sure) do not appear to have found any buyers, unfortunately. But the fact that someone thought they might — and that The Courier newspaper thought it worth reporting — is indicative of the enthusiastic demand for bonds in the City of London at the time. “Any kind of fantastical enterprise could try to raise money in London,” Wigglesworth adds, “such as an effort to drain the Red Sea to find the gold and jewels of the Egyptians drowned while chasing Moses.” However excessive it sometimes got, London’s enthusiasm for investing was an enormous advantage for England. During the Napoleonic Wars, for example, Wigglesworth estimates that France would have had to pay a yield of 50% to borrow additional funds from the bond market. England, by contrast, could borrow at 6% or less. It’s difficult to win a war against an enemy whose cost of capital is one-tenth of your own. This helps explain why Napoleon sold Louisiana to the United States for the famously low price of $15 million: The price was effectively set at the maximum of what the US could borrow from London’s bond markets. As cheap as the price seems now, the US government did not have $15 million to hand. So it paid by issuing bonds to France — which France accepted only because English investment banks had agreed in advance to purchase at a discount. (Yes, England’s bankers were funding France’s war against England.) The English learned the power of bond markets from the Dutch, who had an immense financial advantage over the Spanish during their long fight for independence. “The rates that the Spanish crown sometimes had to pay for its loans,” Wigglesworth writes, “were similar to those charged by Dutch pawn shops.” The English noticed. Wigglesworth suggests the reason England deposed its home-grown King James II in favor of the Netherlands’ William of Orange was that England was borrowing at 8-14% at the time and the Netherlands was borrowing at 3-5%. Such is the power of bond markets. Wigglesworth similarly attributes the outcome of World War I to the US government’s ability to sell Liberty Bonds to Americans, the proceeds of which were used to keep England and France in the war while the US built a military. For most Americans, who bought strictly for patriotic reasons, Liberty Bonds were the first experience with fixed-income investing. They had a lot to learn. “At the beginning of the Liberty Bond drives,” Wigglesworth writes, “the Treasury would not infrequently receive letters from bond buyers asking when and where they would have to pay the interest on the bond.” It’s still worth learning about, and “A Fabulous Debt” is a fun way to do it. — Byron Gilliam Brought to you by: Meridian 2026 is Stellar's annual

AI might not be killing consulting... October 02, 2026 Presented By Happy Friday! Whether you’re reading this newsletter to impress your friends and colleagues with your knowledge of current events, or you just decided to go for it after logging in to your email to check if your Amazon package has arrived, we hope you have a great day. — Molly Liebergall, Sam Klebanov, Matty Merritt, Dave Lozo, Holly Van Leuven, Neal Freyman, Abby Rubenstein In today’s newsletter, we’ll get into: Volatility in the bond market AI not killing consulting after all The No. 1 song people say they haven’t heard Markets Nasdaq 26,871.6 +0.04% S&P 7,666.45 +0.20% Dow 50,926.56 +0.04% 10-Year 5.237% -6.0 bps Bitcoin $84,741.57 +1.33% Micron $1,097.39 +3.03% Data is provided by *Stock data as of market close, cryptocurrency data as of 3:30pm ET. Here's what these numbers mean. Markets: Stocks managed to clinch a W yesterday after bond yields retreated from earlier highs (more on that below). Tech stocks got a boost from Micron’s strong earnings report—even though Micron itself dipped early in the day before heading upward . IN A SLUMP The global bond rout deepens Illustration: Morning Brew Inc., Photo: Douglas Sacha/Getty Images Government debt is getting dumped like it forgot your birthday. Bond yields around the world hit new multidecade highs yesterday as investors—concerned by inflation and rising fiscal deficits—continued a monthslong, volatile sell-off. Some of yesterday’s spikes reversed course within hours, but at their peaks: The yield on 10-year US Treasury notes hit 5.34%, a level last reached in 2002. France’s 10-year yield also rose to its highest point since 2002. Britain’s 30-year yield surpassed 6%, which hasn’t happened since 1998. Japan’s 10-year yield remained at 30-year record levels after temporarily retreating from that high last week. As the day wore on, investors started “picking between winners and losers,” per the Wall Street Journal. In an indication of which government debts they may consider relatively safer, yields on US and German bonds fell, while yields on French, Italian, and Greek bonds remained higher. (As a reminder, bond yields move inversely to bond prices.) Why is this happening? Bond markets—which influence borrowing costs for corporate financing and mortgages —came under serious pressure after the Iran war started disrupting global energy flows: The international benchmark for oil sat just above $70 per barrel before the war began, but now hovers around $100. These elevated prices have exacerbated inflation in individual countries, and investors aren’t sure when it’ll end. With the underlying concerns expected to continue, “We would expect volatility to persist,” Rockefeller Capital Management’s chief investment officer told WSJ. These concerns are compounded in countries with ballooning deficits and high government spending. France, for example, appears borderline radioactive in the bond market as its fragmented political leaders work to rein in its persistent deficit with multibillion-dollar spending cuts. Though US debt recently surpassed $40 trillion, investors appear a bit more comfortable buying short-term US bonds after softer-than-expected inflation data released this week made a second rate hike this year seem less likely. This morning’s jobs report may give investors a clearer picture of the country’s economy. —ML Sponsored By Disney+ Your watch history makes no sense But that’s a good thing. It takes a special kind of person to go from watching their childhood cartoon to a serious doctor drama in the same day—but hey, that’s you, isn’t it? Disney+ Hulu makes your day, every day . Literally. It’s your day when you get to choose what to watch . Some days you want a laugh. Others you might feel a little more nostalgic. Sometimes it’s game day, and you need to be locked in, and sometimes you’re looking for something fresh—like the all-new Hulu Original series Furious. Whatever you’re in the mood for, it’s all yours, and all right there with a Disney+ Hulu bundle subscription. Discover your next favorite . World Tour de headlines Kevin Carter/Getty Images 📉 Nike announced poor sales, layoff plans with earnings report. Yesterday, Nike announced its second consecutive quarter of falling revenue , along with plans to strengthen business “the right way for the long-term,” as CEO Elliott Hill said in a statement. Since Hill took the reins in 2024, he’s been attempting to claw back retail business lost in the company’s prior focus on direct-to-consumer sales. Hill said that to shore up Nike’s finances, headcount will shrink, although specific eliminations won’t be decided until calendar year 2027. The Wall Street Journal reported that Nike stock is on track to hit its worst year on record; it’s down more than 40% so far this year.— HVL 🚢 The US is moving troops to the Middle East as Trump mulls next steps in Iran. The US military is sending ships carrying ~9,000 troops to the Middle East, a government official told the Associated Press yesterday. The Wall Street Journal reported that the US was sending a third aircraft carrier and additional ships carrying members of the Navy and Marine Corps to the region. The move comes after President Trump rejected Iran’s latest ceasefire proposal and said he would resume attacking Iran after the US midterm elections next month if a deal could not be reached.— AR ⚖️ Renee Good’s family sued the government over her death. The family of Renee Good, who was fatally shot by an ICE agent during the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, filed a pair of federal lawsuits yesterday, against the officer who killed her and high-ranking government officials. Good’s death in January, as well as that of fellow US citizen Alex Pretti, brought nationwide attention to the ICE surge in the area. The suits accuse the government of being responsible for Good’s wrongful death, failing to investigate the death properly, and acting wit