Japan reaffirmed plans to deploy missiles on an island near Taiwan as tensions with China continue to smolder. Trump said this week he expects much lower interest rates once he can install a new Federal Reserve chair next May, although growing opposition to a December rate cut inside the Fed suggests he may not get his way. At the same time, the bond market is straining to absorb a flood of new issuance from tech companies funding AI investments. Since the start of September, Amazon, Google, Meta and Oracle have issued nearly 90 billion dollars of investment grade bonds, more than they sold over the previous 40 months. The US and Ukraine also report progress in talks on a peace plan with Russia, while Trump's proposed November 27 deadline looks likely to drift into the following week. The latest version of the plan reportedly incorporates most of Kyiv's priorities, including raising the military personnel cap to 800k from the originally proposed 600k. Odds of a ceasefire by the end of 2026 have only moved slightly higher to 52%.
US and EU futures opened strong and the main Asian indices traded in the green overnight, helped by rising odds of a December rate cut and headlines that Trump's administration is actively considering allowing NVDA235.21 to export H200 chips to CN. Premarket, 7 of the Mag7 are up, with Apple,NVDA,MSFT520.52 lagging and Google leading +3.4%. Within tech, Google has shown very strong momentum over the past week on the back of the Gemini 3 release, which many view as the most important AI event at least since DeepSeek. There is a real possibility that Google takes over NVDA's leadership and drives the next phase of the bubble, but that also remains to be seen. Seasonally, November and December returns tend to be among the strongest.
We were stopped out on Sunday's open before ES1!7,779.66 retraced to almost flat line premarket. These stop hunts now feel personal. As I said last week, whether this correction develops into a full bear market remains to be seen. ES and NQ1!31,019.15 are both still sitting above their trendline support, while NVDA was sold sharply premarket and remains below the key resistance around 181. We need all three back above support to extend the bubble, or all three below support to accelerate the downside. While this divergence persists, we are likely to see more choppy tape until a clear break forms.