Midday Mashup
Published
The bond-driven, oil-fueled selloff that opened the week has not eased by midday, even as its proximate trigger has shifted. Brent crude spiked as much as 5% above $105 overnight after the deadliest Houthi attacks yet on Riyadh, including strikes on King Khalid Airport and a heavily damaged Saudi plane at the airport, but crude has since pared those gains to below $104 after President Trump posted that the US will not attack Iran before the November 3 midterms, while insisting the Hormuz blockade stays in full force and Iran "will not have a nuclear weapon." Treasury Secretary Hassett said refineries are coming back online with relief coming soon, but the Nasdaq is still down 1% and the VIX has jumped 5.4%, underscoring that the risk-off tone from Tuesday's historic bond selloff hasn't lifted even as the oil spike cools.
Equity moves reflect that split. Chipotle jumped 7.4% on a Financial Times report that Starbucks has explored a takeover. CoStar Group rose 6.7% and GoDaddy gained 6.2%, while Paramount Skydance added 5.4% after its CEO said streaming and studios are outpacing linear declines. On the other side, chip and AI-infrastructure names were hit hard: Coherent fell 8.6%, Arm Holdings dropped 7.4%, CoreWeave and Astera Labs each lost 7.1%, and AST SpaceMobile fell 6.8%, consistent with the broader technology selloff tied to rising yields.
Policy crosscurrents added to the noise. The Fed's Musalem said inflation remains elevated from demand pressure and supply shocks and flagged investor concern over fiscal sustainability, while ECB's Lagarde told euro finance ministers there's no sense of broadening price pressures but that the ECB has tools to counter disorderly markets. The Labor Department suspended Microsoft and Adobe from a labor certification program after Vice President Vance pressed tech firms on US hiring. Treasury eased some Russia sanctions until January 9 while tightening measures on Iran's shadow fleet, and Centcom said US forces have backed shipment of more than 1.25 billion barrels of crude through Hormuz in recent months, a reminder that physical flows have held up even as headlines around the strait keep markets on edge.