CHINA TIGHTENS SCRUTINY OF RARE EARTH MAGNET EXPORT LICENSE APPLICATIONS; SCRUTINY IS SIMILAR TO APRIL, AT HEIGHT OF US-CHINA TRADE WAR – RTRS CITES SOURCES

*CHINA'S RARE EARTH EXPORTS DROPPED BY 31% IN SEPTEMBER

*Bessent told FT that China’s introduction of the restrictions — three weeks before Trump is expected to meet Xi in South Korea — reflected problems in its own economy. “This is a sign of how weak their economy is, and they want to pull everybody else down with them,"... “If they want to slow down the global economy, they will be hurt the most.”

TRUMP: CHINA NOT BUYING US SOYBEANS IS ECONOMICALLY HOSTILE ACT

TRUMP: CONSIDERING ENDING COOKING OIL BUSINESS WITH CHINA

GOLD REACH RECORD HIGH OF $4,200

TRUMP: WE'RE IN A TRADE WAR WITH CHINA

TRUMP: TARIFFS VERY IMPORTANT TOOL FOR DEFENCE

TRUMP: 'LOOKING AT LAND' STRIKES ON VENEZUELA

TRUMP: I'M GOING TO GO TO THE SUPREME COURT TO WATCH THE TARIFFS CASE

GOLD FUTURES HIT RECORD HIGH AT $4,300

S&P 500 DOWN 1%

BTC DROPPED BELOW $108K

VIX HITS NEARLY 5-MONTH HIGH, RISES ABOVE 24

US 2-YEAR YIELD FALLS TO 3.42%, LOWEST SINCE SEPTEMBER 2022

TRADERS FULLY PRICE IN TWO MORE FED RATE CUTS BY END-2025

TRUMP SAYS HE'S MEETING WITH CHINA'S XI IN TWO WEEKS

TRUMP: SUCH HIGH TARIFFS ON CHINESE GOODS NOT SUSTAINABLE

TRUMP, ASKED IF HIGH CHINA TARIFFS WILL STAND: NO

TRUMP PARDONED BINANCE FOUNDER CHANGPENG ZHAO ON WEDNESDAY: WSJ

A pardon will likely pave the way for Binance, to return to the U.S., after the company pleaded guilty in 2023 to violating U.S. anti-money-laundering requirements and was barred from operating there.

Trump pardoned CZ following months of efforts by CZ to boost the Trump family's own crypto company.

Trump: I pardon a lot of people. I don't know. CZ was recommended by a lot of people.

Altcoin market capitalization would be roughly $800 billion higher if retail investors — especially in South Korea — hadn’t redirected their attention toward crypto-related stocks and other equities (DATs): 10x Research CEO

U.S. SEPT CPI IN 30MIN: INFINITYHEDGE

Forecast:
*headline: 0.39% vs 0.38% M/M prev.
*headline: 3.1% vs 2.9% Y/Y
*Core CPI: 0.30% vs 0.35% M/M
*Core CPI: 3.1% vs 3.1% Y/Y

SPX rxn on Core MoM:
> 0.40%: -1.5% to -2.25%
0.35-0.40%: -0.5% to -1.25%
0.30-0.35%: flat to +0.5% (base case)
< 0.30%: +0.75% to +1.5%

JPM sees a ~65% chance that S&P 500 will be +ve following CPI release.

JPM expecting this CPI day to be “less volatile than usual,” with investors’ expectations that the Fed will ease again on Oct. 29 likely offsetting any inflation-related angst.

GS: Market is fully pricing the cuts in our forecast through the end of this year. The impetus for the market’s shift towards pricing more easing has been the weaker labor market and not the inflation picture, so this CPI print is unlikely to be definitive.

BBG Strategists: Bonds and equities face asymmetric downside risks should inflation come in hotter-than-expected on Friday. However, if traders start questioning the quality of the data, the first reaction may not be the last.

U.S. SEPT CORE CPI RISES 0.2% M/M; EST. 0.30%; PREV. 0.35%

*US SEPT. CONSUMER PRICES RISE 3% Y/Y; EST. +3.1%
*US SEPT. CORE CPI RISES 0.2% M/M; EST. +0.3%
*US SEPT. CORE CPI RISES 3% Y/Y; EST. +3.1%
*US SEPT. CONSUMER PRICES RISE 0.3% M/M; EST. +0.4%

BLS: SEPTEMBER CPI DATA COLLECTED BEFORE GOV SHUTDOWN

THERE WILL LIKELY NOT BE AN INFLATION RELEASE NEXT MONTH DUE TO GOV SHUTDOWN: WHITE HOUSE

Keep in mind that it would have taken staff at the BLS to collect price data during the month of October in order to release that month’s data. And those workers essentially weren’t there. Economists have said it is probably easier for the BLS to report October jobs figures -- companies after all know who they hired and fired, they have records. But if no price surveys were conducted in October, it may be awfully tough to reconstruct a CPI report. This would leave the Fed without a good read on how inflation is evolving ahead of its final meeting of the year in December.

The Week Ahead Is Back: infinityhedge: BIG WEEK

Mon:
*U.S. Gov shutdown enters its 27th day (2nd longest)
*The Future Investment Initiative event (speakers: CEO of Goldman Sachs, JPM, Barclays, Standard Chartered, HSBC, etc
*MegaETH Public Sale at 1pm UTC
*Trump arrives in Japan
*Hong Kong debuts first Solana spot ETF
*Beijing financial forum
*Saylor expected announce another BTC purchase

Tue:
*NVIDIA GTC Conference: Jensen Huang keynote at 12pm ET
*Monad Early airdrop reveal/Tokenomics expected ?
*PayPal Earnings

Wed:
*FOMC meeting (“Powell will likely characterize the cut as insurance against downside risks to employment. While the government shutdown has delayed official data, alternative data suggest continued downside risks to employment. Policymakers have little reason to adjust their outlook from September, keeping another cut on the table for December.”)
*BoC meeting
*Meta, Alphabet, Microsoft earnings

Thu:
*BOJ meeting (will likely leave rates unchanged)
*ECB meeting
*Trump expected to meet with Xi Jinping (US & China said Sunday that they came to terms on a range of contentious points; Bessent said that he expected that China would not impose export controls on rare earths and that the U.S. would not impose retaliatory tariffs on China while china offered no details but said US expressed a firm stance, while China remained resolute in safeguarding its interests & China and the US reached a basic consensus), setting the table for Trump & Xi to finalize a potential deal)
*Apple, Amazon, Coinbase, Microstrategy, Reddit, Roblox, Eli Lilly earnings
*SEC Decision on BlackRock’s Ethereum Staking ETF?

Fri:
*U.S. September PCE
*Exxon, Chevron earnings
*APEC Leaders Meeting
*Mt. Gox 34k BTC Repayment Deadline (but now delayed to October 2026, four days ahead of its deadline)
*Trump’s deadline for raising tariffs on Mexico

Sat:
*US Supreme Court hears tariff legality case
*US retaliatory tariff on china goes into effect if no deal finalize by Trump & Xi

*U.S. government data may be delayed due to the shutdown
*Monad airdrop claim closes on Nov 3
*U.S. court will hear arguments for Sam Bankman-Fried’s appeal (a new trial or reversal of conviction) on Nov 4 at 10:00am

TBA/Whole Week: U.S. Senate expected to vote on trump tariffs, NVIDIA GTC, Trump might Meet North Korea’s Kim Jong on Asia Trip: infinityhedge

⊷Bloomberg Economics took a closer look at what the US-China trade framework could mean:
*Rare earths: China will likely defer its broad controls (Bessent suggested China may delay the measure for a year).
*US tariffs: Trump’s threat of 100% tariffs on Chinese products are unlikely to materialize.
*US export controls: Existing ones on tech are expected to stay in place (Beijing has not yet confirmed this interpretation). The US may retract threatened curbs on critical software and/or are extension of export controls to subsidiaries of blacklisted Chinese companies.
*Fentanyl: More Chinese cooperation on the crackdown on drug flows, which could pave the way for the US to reduce its 20% tariffs tied to the issue.

https://infinityhedge.substack.com/p/the-7-days-633

CIRCLE LAUNCHES ARC BLOCKCHAIN TESTNET WITH VISA, BLACKROCK, GOLDMAN SACHS, HSBC, ANTHROPIC, AWS, COINBASE, KRAKEN, ICE, AMONG 100+ INSTITUTIONAL PARTNERS: COINDESK

*Circle said Arc is meant to serve as a base layer for financial services from tokenized funds, cross-border payments to FX settlement. It will offer features like U.S. dollar-based fees, sub-second settlement and optional privacy controls.

*Circle said long-term goal is to decentralize Arc, opening up governance and validator participation.

*AI giant Anthropic plans to integrate its Claude large language models on the network to give developers building on Arc access to AI tools.

S&P 500 HITS 6,900 FOR THE FIRST TIME

NVIDIA BECOMES FIRST COMPANY TO HIT $5 TRILLION MARKET VALUE

NVIDIA'S INSANE RUN: INFINITYHEDGE

$0.5T: Nov, 2022 (Chatgpt released)
$1T: May, 2023
$2T: Feb, 2024
$3T: Jun, 2024
$4T: Jul, 2025
$5T: Oct, 2025

Cursor 2.0

Cursor launched their first coding model, 'Composer' is a frontier model that is 4x faster than similarly intelligent models.

https://cursor.com/blog/2-0

THE FED CUT RATES BY 25 BPS, AS EXPECTED

FOMC STATEMENT

FED SAYS IT WILL STOP SHRINKING BALANCE SHEET ON DEC. 1

*The Fed Ending QT as expected

*Fed says it will end the reduction of its securities holdings beginning on Dec. 1, after slowing the pace of runoff earlier this year, and will roll maturing agency debt into Treasury bills.

*Fed President Jeff Schmid also dissented in favor of no cut

BI: The “hawkish” dissent was a bit of a surprise, which may change our opinion about the pace of cuts going forward, but there’s still little in the data to make us shift our opinion about the shape of the yield curve. There’s little in the statement or with the end of QT that’s likely to change the shape of the yield curve.