How the US auto market reflects the wider economy... October 05, 2026 Presented By How about them apples? No, really, consider this our public service announcement: Do not eat an apple straight off the tree when apple-picking. Give it the old rinse ‘n’ rub first to avoid illness. And a recommendation for the orchard-bound: Jonagolds are always our top pick. — Holly Van Leuven, Brendan Cosgrove, Neal Freyman In today’s newsletter, we’ll get into: The auto industry responding to gas prices US bombers being moved quickly out of the UK Not a lot of people digging the movie Digger Markets: Year-to-Date Nasdaq 27,190.86 +16.99% S&P 7,722.72 +12.81% Dow 51,176.96 +6.48% 10-Year 5.277% +111.4 bps Bitcoin $86,714.41 -0.91% Amazon $251.52 +8.97% Data is provided by *Stock data as of market close, cryptocurrency data as of 7:00pm ET. Here's what these numbers mean. Markets: Despite its ghoulish reputation, October is actually one of the top months for stock returns and, so far, all three major indexes are in the green this month. Stock spotlight: Amazon, down 2.7% over the past month, is looking to jump-start holiday spending with its two-day October Prime Day sales event, beginning tomorrow. under the hood High demand for hybrids leaves US automakers in Park Justin Sullivan/Getty Images ’Tis the season for leaf peeping and, now that a slew of automakers reported earnings last week, deets peeping. Analysts were especially interested to see what’s happening to the auto industry amid high gas prices . The big takeaways Hybrid and passenger vehicles are having a moment. That, in turn, benefited Asian auto manufacturers in the quarter, because Ford, GM, and Stellantis have surrendered those categories: In the US market, Kia offers seven hybrid models, Hyundai six, Honda five, and Toyota 18. The Detroit automakers only offer two hybrid models: the Ford Maverick midsize pickup and a version of the Chevrolet Corvette. That’s impacting overall market share. Asian automakers made more than half of the new cars that Americans bought in Q3, according to Cox Automotive, and cars from US manufacturers accounted for a record-low share of ~36%. Hybrid vehicles drove a lot of it: Korean automakers: Hyundai’s hybrid sales rose 39% in the third quarter, and Kia’s rose 152%. Japanese automakers: Toyota hybrid sales were up 29% for the quarter and Honda’s, 21%. New record ahead? Korean automakers have never overtaken Ford in US auto sales, but demand for hybrids got them closer than ever last quarter. Hyundai and Kia combined sales rose to 506,200 vehicles, while Ford’s quarterly figure fell to 509,764. Development is slow That’s true for both manufacturers and consumers. Ford and GM plan to introduce more hybrid models, but automakers need years of on-ramping to bring new and different vehicle types to market. And the biggest fans of big trucks and SUVs aren’t that quick to look for something more fuel-efficient. Erin Keating, an executive analyst at Cox Automotive, told the New York Times that Americans are reacting to high gas prices by driving less or curtailing their spending in other categories, not necessarily swapping vehicles .— HVL Sponsored By PwC Trade and taxes and supply chain, oh my! Midterm elections are near, and with them, the business landscape could be in for major changes. Our recent article with PwC offers guidance on how leaders can prepare for these potential changes. We dig into the strategies that can help businesses adapt to shifts in three key areas: trade, taxes, and supply chains. So if your business could be impacted by trade uncertainty, changes in tax policy, or production pivots, we’ve got you covered. Don’t wait for the results to roll in to adjust your business plans. Get ahead of potential shifts now so you’re ready for what comes next. Start here . World Tour de headlines David Brown/Getty Images 🇬🇧 The US quickly moved bombers out of UK base. US officials told the New York Times that all 12 of the country’s B-1 bombers at the RAF Fairford base were moved over the weekend. The urgent withdrawal was highly unusual, but came in response to new information about an Iran-backed threat, according to the anonymous officials. The Pentagon’s European Command later confirmed that the bombers returned to their home bases but did not provide a reason why. Experts suggested that Fairford might be susceptible to a “gig economy” terrorist attack—the term counterterrorist experts give to small-scale attacks carried out by local proxies outside of the Middle East in response to the Iran war. 💔 Debris from missing medical flight found near Nantucket. The Gulfstream G100 air ambulance registered in Canada was carrying six people from Bermuda to Boston on Saturday when it lost contact with air traffic controllers. The passengers were four Canadians and two Bermudian nationals. Air traffic control audio posted online revealed that the pilot reported electrical problems and an emergency as the craft approached the coast, but then stopped responding. A debris field believed to be from the air ambulance was found later Saturday near Nantucket. An investigation is ongoing. One expert told the Associated Press that the plane may have lost its navigational instruments just as a storm crossed its path. 🤖 President Trump announced members of his “Super Intelligence” task force. The group, to be known as the Super Intelligence Force , will be headed by National Intelligence Director Jay Clayton. Other members include Federal Trade Commission Chair Andrew Ferguson and Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Emil Michael. The task force reports jointly to Trump and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. Trump’s bid to rebrand artificial intelligence as “Super Intelligence” got a big endorsement from Elon Musk, who posted to X yesterday morning, “No more AI / SI / It’s better.” He also said he’d rename SpaceXAI, the parent company of SpaceX, X, and other initiatives, SpaceXSI.— HVL CRUISIN’ FOR A

Global X's Lis Agosto looks past the hyperscalers. October 5, 2026 PRESENTED BY Good morning. As Director of Research & Strategy at Global X, Arelis “Lis” Agosto looks for structural trends that cut across traditional sector or geographic lines. The long-term piece matters too, sometimes five to 10 years to maturity, along with enough companies behind them to build clean exposure, often with a 50% revenue screen. That instinct to look a layer below the obvious names shows up most clearly on AI, a trade folks often try to summarize in a few tickers. We sat down with Lis at FutureProof 2026 to talk about the AI ecosystem beyond the hyperscalers, plus defense, cyber, and the grid that has to carry it all. PRESENTED BY GLOBAL X ETFS AI, Thematics and the Grid Beneath Them Photo via Damon Butler The Daily Upside: There’s been a lot of interest recently in thematic and concentrated strategies. How are you thinking about that? What should people have in mind? Let’s perhaps take a step back and define what thematic investing is, and where concentration might make sense. If we think about thematic investing, it’s really trying to capture a broad long-term structural trend. And that long-term piece is important. Sometimes we think through a potential timeline of five to 10 years out to the full maturity of a theme. But we’re also looking at areas that are unconstrained by traditional sector definitions, geographic definitions. Most of the time when we’re talking about thematic investing, we’re thinking about opportunities that straddle two different sectors, or that potentially span across a variety of different geographies or nations. We know that innovation isn’t necessarily tied to one particular area. The other part I’ll say is that investability piece, of how we think through when a thematic opportunity makes sense. Oftentimes it is how many publicly traded companies are available that we might be able to offer that really high bar of purity exposure, often with a 50% revenue screen. Some opportunities are of course going to be very broad in terms of how many companies play a role in that value chain. And others, that value chain might be a little bit smaller, whether because it’s a very nascent area or because it’s an industry that has consolidated over time and is now seeing a new growth driver. The Daily Upside: What themes do you see picking up for investors in the second half of the year? There’s so many that come to mind. One, for example, is defense technology. Of course, we’d be remiss to talk about artificial intelligence, but if we think about one of the potential applications of that, it is defense, and we’re seeing a variety of different tailwinds come together. We’re seeing geopolitics come top of mind, and not only in the US but across NATO, we’re seeing budgets increase across the board. But more importantly, where that money is going. It’s going towards cybersecurity, it’s going towards drones, it’s going towards low cost, highly technologically savvy technologies that can be deployed very quickly and are changing the broader way we think about defense. Another that might be top of mind is electricity and energy generation as a whole. It’s one that plays a very close relationship to geopolitics, and we’ve seen some of the supply shocks in recent months. We expect electricity demand to increase 50% in the next 25 years. How do we potentially meet that demand, and how do we have a good composition of energy sources that insulates us from some of the energy shocks we have seen? Whether it be natural gas and LNG, whether it be the midstream potentially benefiting from increased volume going through it, whether it be nuclear or renewables. All of these are areas that should really be top of mind, and ones that perhaps are a little bit underappreciated in broad market indices. We’re at record highs of concentration right now. 40% of the S&P is just those top 10 holdings. How do you potentially complement that exposure? To some extent it of course is coming through areas like energy and defense. The Daily Upside: AI is something different issuers have applied to products in different ways. What opportunities do you see with it? I would say that just how broad that ecosystem of AI is, I think it’s a little bit underappreciated or misunderstood by some investors. Of course, we understand the Mag 7 or some of the hyperscalers. We might even understand some of the immediate inputs that go into that, like semiconductors or memory. But take a couple steps back. We’re talking about data centers, data center construction. We’re talking about energy supply. Even minerals, so copper and silver, uranium, all of these really play a role. So the infrastructure that underpins AI is quite broad. From an application standpoint, there are many others, whether the physical manifestation of AI being of course robotics, or industries that have been slow to see innovation or adoption from technology being unlocked through AI, like healthcare for example, potentially driving faster drug development with a higher hit rate. These are all areas that are really exciting, and I think it speaks to the ecosystem of AI. Then look at data centers, a potential beneficiary of this hyperscaler buildout. Thinking through the current capacity, it’s about a 65% increase in just the cost per gigawatt for a data center. Thinking through what leasing rates currently look like, it’s 1.4% just in terms of vacancy rates. So very, very minimal room for us to potentially absorb that increase in capacity. That puts us in a position where we’re not necessarily looking at some of the inputs that might be top of mind right now in the markets, but digging deeper as to what’s actually driving some of that potential growth, or what those bottlenecks might be. The Daily Upside: With energy prices being up, inflation being sticky, and rates being higher for longer, how should investors be thinking about all that? I would say that it’s n

Plus: Swings swinging | Monday, October 05, 2026 Axios Markets By Emily Peck and Matt Phillips · Oct 05, 2026 🥱 Monday. Garfield wasn't fond of the day, and we feel aligned. 🗓️ This morning , U.S. stock futures are down slightly, and observers are looking closely at Europe as a fiscal crisis in France is rattling investors. More on that below. Plus, Matt charts the swings in the Treasury market. And a look at what Charles Schwab's clients were buying last month. 👀 THE AXIOS SHOW: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent speaks with Axios' Mike Allen in a wide-ranging interview touching on inflation, Iran, Fed chairman Kevin Warsh and whether he regrets saying "I am the house now." Watch on YouTube. Let's get after it! 1,126 words, a 4-minute read. 1 big thing: Why France's debt crisis matters By Emily Peck Photo illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Photos: Thomas Samson/POOL/AFP and Romain Perrocheau/AFP via Getty Images France is dealing with a major debt crisis and social unrest ahead of its presidential election next year. Why it matters: Worries are rising about contagion in Europe and beyond, and the situation is drawing comparisons with the sovereign debt crisis that rocked the European Union in the 2010s. "Government bond yields in France are spiraling out of control. Contagion to the rest of high-debt Europe is unfolding rapidly," Brookings' Robin Brooks wrote recently. Where it stands: Yields on government debt are rising across Europe and in the U.S., but the situation in France is worse. Investors are demanding higher yields to hold French debt, compared with bonds from Germany, which are seen as a safer alternative. On Friday, the difference, or spread, between the two countries' bond yields, was the widest it has been since the debt crisis. The spread is widening due to "higher sovereign default risk in France," Macquarie's Thierry Wizman wrote in a note Thursday titled: "Are the French Toast?" Data: FactSet; Chart: Emily Peck/Axios State of play: France is dealing with challenges that should have a familiar ring to Americans: a ballooning deficit, an aging population driving up costs, and rising political polarization. Those pressures were building before the war in Iran. The conflict has made things worse by driving up energy costs and slowing economic growth. Threat level: It's getting higher. "Investors are apprehensive about a looming fiscal crisis that could undermine the European Union's legal framework," per a note from Evercore. "Emerging signs of contagion, particularly to Italy, are concerning as they signal a broader instability." Zoom out: The French government is trying to cut its budget to reassure investors, but it is essentially in a holding pattern until next year's election. And that's what has investors antsy. "Political paralysis is the trigger," says Gianluca Benigno, an economics professor at University of Lausanne. The markets are pricing in France's ability to rein in its spending. France's far-right candidate Marine Le Pen is leading in the polls and has proposed writing a "golden rule" into the constitution, limiting the deficit, to constrain spending, as well as tax cuts. Far-left presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, meanwhile, has suggested that the country's central bank should cancel the roughly 18% of French debt it holds: "Take it and burn it." Between the lines: An action like that would be like setting fire to your house to fix the broken pipes. But as debt crises intensify, policymakers tend to grab for more extreme ideas, says Mitu Gulati, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, who studies sovereign debt and helped develop a restructuring plan for Greek debt in 2012. "Bad financial conditions give birth to loony solutions," he says. Friction point: During the 2010s crisis, investors ran to the U.S. for safety — buying up U.S. Treasury debt, and yields here fell sharply. This time around, the U.S. status as a safe haven is less assured — it's unclear if that would happen again. In fact, the yield on U.S. 10-year government bonds is currently higher than on French debt. Reality check: It's still early days and likely that the European Central Bank will step in to help. The causes of the current crisis are different from what happened more than a decade ago — now, developed countries are adjusting to a new era after years of being able to borrow money at ultra-low rates. 2. Markets especially attuned to outlook for Fed By Matt Phillips Data: FactSet; Chart: Axios/Matt Phillips The yield on the 10-year note has gotten a lot of ink lately, but yields on shorter-term government bonds have also been swinging. Why it matters: Shorter-term U.S. government debt is heavily influenced by market expectations for what the Federal Reserve will do next on monetary policy. The latest: And those yields — for instance on the two-year note, shown above — have been volatile, reflecting an uncertain economic backdrop. Things were looking quite strong , until a weak jobs report landed on Friday. On top of that, the market is still trying to figure out how the Fed will behave as the economic outlook turns foggy. What they're saying: "The Fed knows they're going to have to tighten policy. They just don't know how quickly and how far," Gennadiy Goldberg, head of U.S. rates strategy at TD Securities, tells Axios. "They'll probably need to do more," Goldberg says. "But at the same time, I think they're pouring some cold water on the narrative that they're looking to kill the economy in the process. They're not." Bottom line: That uncertainty at the Fed is being mirrored by the markets, which is part of the reason why bonds have been so volatile . A MESSAGE FROM AXIOS Simplify: Do 50% more with 50% less With AI upending work and life, Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen & Roy Schwartz, the bestselling authors of "Smart Brevity" offer a one-stop survival guide to dramatically improving your life, work and happiness. The idea: Toxic complexity clogs our inboxes and

Plus: Amazon wants human shoppers, no ifs, ands or bots. October 5, 2026 PRESENTED BY YAHOO FINANCE Good morning and happy Monday. What’s the John Dory with OpenAI and the land Down Under? Last month, after Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced that one of the US-based company’s artificial intelligence agents went rogue and hacked his country’s national healthcare system, an apology followed. OpenAI, which didn’t bother to report the incident for months, acknowledged that it should have “handled our response better” and said it intended to “rebuild trust with the Australian people.” Well, so far, not so good on ya. On Friday, officials in the state of New South Wales said a rogue OpenAI agent conducted another hack on a government agency, this time accessing non-public data on bushfires by breaching a National Parks and Wildlife Service website. The incident also happened in June, and officials said OpenAI didn’t inform them until last week. Mercifully, no personal information is believed to have been accessed in either breach. Before it comes to that, officials there better strengthen their cri-key encryption. MARKETS S&P 500 7,722.72 ▲ +0.73% DJI 51,176.96 ▲ +0.49% GRAL $143.26 ▲ +8.07% Stock data as of market close on October 2, 2026. INDUSTRIALS The Biggest Steel Plant in US History Is Coming; Some Hawkeyes Don’t See It That Way Photo via Bonnie Cash - Pool via CNP/CNP / Polaris/Newscom Big announcement. Big deal. A few little asterisks. Last week, business and political leaders gathered at the White House to announce a new $15 billion steel mill planned for Iowa that they said will support 1,750 jobs and process up to 10 million tons per year. With supply from neighboring Minnesota’s first new iron-ore mine in half a century, “the largest steel plant ever built in the United States” would represent a new day for US industry. But, on Friday, legislators in the Hawkeye State were told the mill is “not a done deal” after they were called in to rush approval for $1.4 billion worth of incentives because the company behind the project insisted on receiving more than what Iowa law allows. A Bright Future and an Underwhelming Past Building the new plant is Minnesota-based Mesabi Metallics, a subsidiary of Indian conglomerate Essar Group. The White House proclaimed the company’s plans to set up shop in Iowa are a sign of America’s domestic steel industry “roaring back to life” under the 50% tariffs on steel imports the Trump administration introduced last year. Iowa Economic Development Authority Director Debi Durham told state senators Friday that she was “surprised” by President Donald Trump’s statement that the project was a “done deal” because, as she plainly put it, “this is not a done deal.” In fact, officials learned after the announcement that Mesabi would not build in the state unless Iowa lawmakers awarded it double the state’s 5% tax credit for capital projects of at least a billion dollars. Legislators were called in for a special session to approve a $1.4 billion incentive package, the largest in Iowa history, over the objections of Democrats and some Republicans. “In my area, we have John Deere, which has served Iowa and the nation and the world for over 100 years, and they don’t get a $1 billion tax break,” Dave Sires, a Republican state senator who said the subsidy shouldn’t be given to foreign firms, told WHO 13 Des Moines. Other critics worried about Mesabi’s own complicated history and megaprojects of the past that have underdelivered for the region: Mesabi emerged from bankruptcy in 2017, a year after failing to complete a planned iron-ore mine in Minnesota and ending up $1 billion in debt. KCCI Des Moines reported Friday that it’s still repaying the North Star State for public funds it received for that project. And Midwesterners haven’t forgotten, during the first Trump administration, when Wisconsin was promised a $10 billion Foxconn factory, lured with local and state tax incentives, that was to transform the town of Mount Pleasant into an economic powerhouse and bring 13,000 jobs. Only a small fraction of that, a $1 billion investment and 1,400 jobs, ever materialized. Owners Away: The plant would not be the first major victory for a foreign firm in US steel production in recent years. Last year, Trump greenlit the takeover of US Steel by Japan’s Nippon Steel, which he opposed during the 2024 election, after negotiating a “golden share” that gave the US government a veto over major decisions like plant closures. Written by Sean Craig PRESENTED BY YAHOO FINANCE Give Your Next Investment Thesis a 40-Year Head Start How far back does your data go? Many free financials stop after a few years, so the only stretch you can examine is the recent past. But how did the company you’re vetting hold up through the credit crisis, or the dot-com bust? The information is out there, and it’s more accessible than you’d think. A Yahoo Finance Gold subscription gives you up to 40 years of income statements, balance sheets, and cash flow history on the tickers you follow, exportable to CSV, so you can see how a business held up, year by year. You’ll also unlock the AlphaSpace platform, which puts your charts, your price alerts, broker-grade news, and live options flow in one view. Take seven days free before you decide. Start your Yahoo Finance Gold trial. HEALTHCARE Grail Jumps as Cancer Test Nears Market It’s not a cancer cure, but it’s an oncological Holy Grail in its own right. Shares of biotech firm Grail jumped more than 11% last week after a US Food and Drug Administration advisory panel endorsed its groundbreaking blood test technology that is capable of screening for dozens of different cancers. How about that? Some potentially honest-to-God good news. One final step will be sorting through the insurance question, which is exactly as complicated as it sounds. That Scans Under present FDA-approved guidelines, only prostate cancer can be screened for via blood testi

Token2049 Draws the Line Between Hype and Hard Cash DeFi Cash Flows Challenge Institutional Network Valuations Token2049 Draws the Line Between Hype and Hard Cash Oct 5 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 Capital is rotating out of speculative narratives and into actual on-chain fee generation. Over the weekend Polymarket generated $9.9 million in gross revenue across US and DeFi activity, outpacing Hyperliquid’s $2.64 million over the same 48-hour stretch. Yet, Hyperliquid commands an $86 billion fully diluted token valuation, backed by a newly minted $193 million annualized revenue run rate from its reserve balance yield. The macro trading backdrop reinforces this institutional flight to yield and cash flows. With equity markets watching semiconductor stocks chop and macro desks navigating sticky inflation and shifting Fed policy, capital allocators are demanding balance sheet durability. As crypto market analysis shifts toward Token2049 in Singapore, the friction between consumer speculative volume and institutional financial plumbing is widening. Speculators are chasing the next prediction market launch, while sovereign-scale institutions are quietly locking up order-book equity. 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 Real Cash Flows and Institutional Absorption The macro engine driving this market is no longer simple liquidity expansion. It is the raw capture of sovereign yield and fee conversion. Hyperliquid’s recent integration with USDC reserves shows how on-chain architecture is capturing off-chain interest. Through its AQAv2 mechanism, Hyperliquid logged its first monthly payment of $14.58 million purely from USDC reserves. That single mechanism internalizes cash yields from non-trading collateral, handing the protocol an annualized run rate near $193 million. This shifts protocol economics entirely. Trading fees alone are inherently volatile and dry up during macro consolidations. Monopolizing yield on underlying collateral creates a non-cyclical cash flow machine. The revenue feeds directly into Hyperliquid’s Assistance Fund to execute automated buybacks on the native token. When non-trading collateral creates permanent buy pressure, market dynamics decouple from standard altcoin liquidity sweeps. Institutional players have clearly noticed this structural shift. Hyperliquid Labs unlocked 3.75 million tokens for team distribution, but zero tokens hit the secondary market. ICE leadership has publicly stated that Hyperliquid’s throughput and architecture rival major traditional exchanges. When the world’s largest exchange operator takes down an entire foundation unlock off-market, secondary spot traders waiting to buy a supply dump get left behind. This institutional positioning signals a clear macro trend. Traditional operators are acquiring the core order-book layer of decentralized finance. They are securing proprietary access before public markets price in the convergence. The players exposed to this transition are the centralized secondary retail platforms that rely purely on exchange trading spreads. 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 Cash Generators vs. Protocol Valuations While decentralized derivatives focus on balance sheet monetization, prediction platforms are extracting unprecedented fees from event volatility. Over a single weekend, Polymarket generated nearly four times the gross revenue of the premier decentralized perps platform. The split between fee capture and network valuation is driving tactical positioning. Weekend Revenue Capture: Polymarket pulled in $9.9 million ($4.81M Saturday, $5.09M Sunday) versus Hyperliquid’s $2.64 million ($1.14M Saturday, $1.50M Sunday). Monetization vs. Valuation: Polymarket delivered superior short-term cash flow, while the $HYPE token trades at an $86 billion valuation underpinned by structural reserve buybacks. USDC Reserve Yield: A $14.58 million 30-day reserve payout establishes a $193 million annual programmatic floor for protocol buybacks. Institutional Take-Down: 3.75 million tokens were cleared via OTC to institutional buyers ahead of the October unlock, eliminating expected spot liquidations. TradFi Integration: High-level institutional panels at Token2049 feature ICE management alongside Hyperliquid leadership, solidifying enterprise alignment. The data highlights a significant market dislocation. Traders bid up network tokens on fee speculation, but protocols that programmatically route treasury interest back into balance-sheet buybacks sustain real floors. Event-driven platforms must prove their fees can persist outside of high-volatility news cycles. Protocols building institutional settlement layers are constructing self-funding models that function in any macro environment. The Convergence Play: DeFi Credit and Post-Quantum Security Beyond derivatives and volume monetization, the institutional focus is moving toward protocol-level solvency and long-term infrastructure security. Ethena and Aave are aligning their roadmap directly with institutional credit rails. Aave founder Stani Kulechov and Ethena’s Guy Young are positioning decentralized lending as the settlement layer for corporate balance sheets. With Standard Chartered publishing a long-term target on AAVE, and discussions around active token bur

The October hike is off the table, and the long end never really eased. 🚨5 Smart Setups As Bitcoin failed $87K The Same Way Nasdaq Failed to Extend. The October hike is off the table, and the long end never really eased. Oct 5 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 opening on yields, not on a truce. The October hike is still off the table, and the long end never really eased after that 24-year high. Equities are slipping with futures after Friday’s chip record. They are following the bonds again. Oil cooled on a reserve-release plan and never cleared. Gulf barrels are moving, Iran still has no deal, and strikes are still hitting the route. Crude is not sprinting. It is not calm, and it is not done shoving yields around. Bitcoin is holding the mid-$80,000s after another failed test of the recent high. ETFs are still buying, just not at last month’s pace. Crypto is on the same stack as stocks: a long end that will not break, 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 – Arbitrum(ARBUSDT) 1-Day Chart #2 – Lighter (LITUSDT) 1-Day Chart #3 – Kaspa(KASUSDT) 1-Day Chart #4 – Ethena(ENAUSDT) 1-Day Chart #5 – NOKIA(NOK) 1-Day Chart #1 – Arbitrum(ARBUSDT) 1-Day Chartist: Kapoor Arbitrum is printing a bullish reversal bounce following a corrective retracement into its previous multi-week breakout shelf, stabilizing above the $0.20412 horizontal structural pivot to trade near $0.20644 on the daily timeframe. Functioning as Ethereum’s flagship optimistic rollup scaling suite powered by Arbitrum Nitro and Stylus, the network delivers high-throughput, low-fee smart contract execution alongside modular infrastructure for Layer-3 Orbit chains. This long trade setup targets an upward expansion toward the $0.26425 overhead swing-high resistance target as long as the $0.18513–$0.20412 support base holds. Trade Levels: Entry: $0.20 Stop Loss: $0.18 Take Profit Levels (TP): TP1: $0.26 Powerful narratives create powerful moves. With 247 Research , you get the insights to be early to the biggest trends in crypto. Chart #2 – Lighter (LITUSDT) 1-Day Chartist: Kapoor (For the chart screenshot, ) Lighter is printing a bullish reversal bounce following a corrective flush into primary demand, reclaiming the $3.8064 horizontal structural shelf to trade near $3.8468 on the daily timeframe. Functioning as a high-performance decentralized order book exchange protocol built as a dedicated zero-knowledge rollup on Ethereum, Lighter offers sub-millisecond off-chain matching, CEX-tier execution speed, and verifiable on-chain settlement with zero trading fees for retail participants. This long trade setup targets an upward expansion toward the $5.5512 overhead resistance target as long as the $3.2633–$3.8064 support base holds. Trade Levels: Entry: $3.85 Stop Loss: $3.26 Take Profit Levels (TP): TP1: $5.55 Chart #3 – Kaspa(KASUSDT) 1-Day Chartist: Kapoor (For the chart screenshot, ) Kaspa is undergoing a pullback retest following an aggressive vertical expansion out of a multi-month rounding accumulation floor, holding support directly at the $0.04275 horizontal pivot shelf on the daily timeframe. Built on the GHOSTDAG/Knighth consensus protocol as a high-throughput, proof-of-work blockDAG, Kaspa enables parallel blocks to coexist and resolve in consensus without orphaning, delivering sub-second block confirmation times and decentralized settlement scalability while maintaining Nakamoto consensus principles. This long trade setup targets an upward expansion toward the $0.07382 overhead resistance target as long as the $0.03124–$0.04275 support base holds. Trade Levels: Entry: $ 0.042 Stop Loss: $0.031 Take Profit Levels (TP): TP1: $0.073 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 – Ethena(ENAUSDT) 1-Day Chartist: Kapoor (For the chart screenshot, ) Ethena has initiated a bullish reversal bounce following a corrective pullback into dynamic ascending support, reclaiming the $0.2211 structural pivot shelf to trade near $0.2530 on the daily timeframe. Built on Ethereum as a synthetic dollar protocol, Ethena provides the decentralized, crypto-native USDe stablecoin backed by delta-neutral cash-and-carry hedging across perpetual futures and spot collateral, generating yield alongside its globally accessible "Internet Bond" savings instrument. This long trade setup targets an upward expansion toward the $0.2973 overhead resistance target as long as the $0.1964–$0.2211 support base holds. Trade Levels: Entry: $0.22 Stop Loss: $0.19 Take Profit Levels (TP): TP1: $0.29 Chart #5 – NOKIA(NOK) 1-Day Chartist: Kapoor (For the chart screenshot, ) (NOK refers to the stock of company Nokia Corporation and not a cryptocurrency.) Nokia Corporation has established an extended accumulation base following a protracted correction from spring highs, printing a bullish reaction off horizontal support to reclaim $10.60 (with pre-market pricing at $10.50) above the $10.37 structural pivot shelf on the daily timeframe. As a global leader in telecommunications, mobile networks, and cloud network infrastructure, Nokia provides end-to-end 5G and next-generation connectivity hardware, IP routing, optical networking systems, and submarine communications alongside licensing its extensive standard-essential patent portfolio via Nokia Technologies. This long trade se

Hyperscaler CapEx is set to hit ~3% of GDP in 2027... 🥛 Can big tech pay its AI bill? 💸 Hyperscaler CapEx is set to hit ~3% of GDP in 2027... Chevy Cassar GM. This is Milk Road Stocks, the newsletter that upgrades your market IQ in 5-minute daily doses. Today we’re talking hyperscaler CapEx: who’s spending what, the risks that come with such large expenditures, and where the new opportunities lie… First, a quick detour. Incogni helps remove your sensitive information from all broker types, including those tricky People Search Sites. Get 55% off Incogni using code MILKROAD. CAN BIG TECH PAY ITS AI BILL? 💸 Amazon is in talks to sell ~$8B worth of Nvidia chips to outside investors... and then rent them straight back. The chips would sit inside an SPV (a separate company set up to own them and borrow against them), while Amazon keeps running them in its own data centers. That takes $8B off Amazon's books in a year where it expects to spend ~$220B on CapEx. And they’re not alone… Many of the richest companies in the world are now borrowing to build AI - Big Tech has sold roughly $220B of bonds so far this year, already more than it sold in all of 2025. And the build those bonds are paying for is huge... Apollo put hyperscaler CapEx (think: Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta and Oracle) at 1.4% of U.S. GDP last year. That's already above the 1.2% peak of the late-1990s telecom boom, with Wall Street's forecasts showing it will more than doudle to ~3% by 2027. 👇 Source: Apollo Problem is, spending like that eats through cash fast. Free cash flow (the cash left over once the build is paid for) at those five companies fell from ~$170B a year in early 2024 to ~$35B by mid-2026. Consensus forecasts compiled by Morgan Stanley's Counterpoint Global have it bottoming at roughly -$265B in Q3 2027, before rebounding to ~$505B by 2030. Source: Morgan Stanley Microsoft is the only one of the five expected to stay cash-positive the whole way through. And lenders have noticed. By late July, 78 of the 91 hyperscaler bonds sold this year were trading at higher yields than at launch, meaning investors wanted more interest to keep lending. But Michael Mauboussin (co-author of that report) argues burning cash is fine, as long as each dollar spent earns more than it costs to raise. His example is Walmart, which ran negative free cash flow for 14 straight years from 1973 to 1986. Its stock returned 33% a year over that stretch (about 3x the S&P 500). The hyperscalers clear that bar for now. Returns on their new investment are forecast to bottom at ~23% in 2027, against a cost of capital of ~8%. I.e. Borrow at 8%, earn 23%. And the demand is there to back it up. As of June, Microsoft, Google Cloud and AWS were sitting on ~$1.7T of signed contracts they hadn't delivered yet. Source: Yahoo Finance Amazon is even raising the price it charges customers to reserve Nvidia chips on AWS by ~15%. The catch is who signed a lot of those contracts... Microsoft's backlog grew 84% in a year, but only 25% once you strip out OpenAI. Our analyst Vincent pointed out that frontier labs (OpenAI, Anthropic and co.) account for roughly half of the AI buildout planned for 2027, even as their share of total AI usage shrinks. If their revenue growth slows, he expects them to commit to less compute. He's watching the lab IPOs for the first look at their gross margins, compute costs and cash burn - and if those disappoint, he expects big price swings across AI infrastructure stocks. Last week he trimmed some of his AI infrastructure names (Bloom Energy, Corning and Infineon among them) and moved the money into what he calls AI adoption plays. Long story longer: Big Tech's AI bill is enormous, it's being paid with borrowed money through 2027, and the returns say it's worth it... for now. Here's what decides whether it stays that way: Q3 cloud earnings at the end of this month will show us whether that $1.7T backlog is still turning into solid revenue. Hyperscaler bond yield will tell us how risky lenders think these loans are getting. The AI lab IPO filings will give us the first proper look at their margins and cash burn. Btw - Vincent's Bloom Energy trim locked in a ~100% gain on that position. He doesn't think the next 3-5x is in the AI infrastructure names the market already knows, and he's laid out where he's putting the money instead inside Milk Road PRO. If you want to see what he’s buying, try Milk Road PRO for a buck for 7 days . KEEP YOUR SSN OFF THE DARK WEB Every day, data brokers profit from your sensitive info—phone number, DOB, SSN—selling it to the highest bidder. What happens then? Best case: companies target you with ads. Worst case: scammers and identity thieves breach those brokers, leaving your data vulnerable or on the dark web. It's time you check out Incogni. It scrubs your personal data from the web, confronting the world’s data brokers on your behalf. And unlike other services, Incogni helps remove your sensitive information from all broker types, including those tricky People Search Sites. Help protect yourself from identity theft, spam calls, and health insurers raising your rates. Plus, just for MILK ROAD readers: Get 55% off Incogni using code MILKROAD 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 Stocks 1257 Dundas St W Toronto, Ontario M6J1X6, Canada