Rekt Mkts: All eyes on CPI

Nothing crazy to write home about yesterday and the market will continue to be tepid until CPI on Wednesday. Stocks feel queit to me for the rest of this month but crypto activity, specifically on chain is picking up quite substantially and it's clear to me that's where I'm going to be spending most of y time.

SPX was basically flat yday, down 0.1%, while NDQ fell 0.3%. US futures are also basically flat this morning, so there is no real follow-through either way. Rates moved back up at the latest close. The 10Y rose roughly 4bps to 4.70% and the 30Y added around 3bps to 5.24%. WTI is up around 2.7% near $84.30 after US-Iran talks over a peace deal and reopening Hormuz hit an impasse, while gold is up around 1.6% near $4,432. To me that looks more like ppl adding inflation and geopolitical protection perhaps ahead of Weds. CPI is tomorrow and that is now the obvious vol event. A softer print only matters to me if yields reverse and the mkt can hold the rally afterwards. If rates stay sticky or another good-news pump gets sold, Friday was probably just another head fake. The market expects 3.4% vs last month's 3.5%

The broad index barely moved yday but the internals were mixed again. NVDA fell 2.9%, MU lost 1.9% and NBIS dropped 2.1%, while SNDK gained 2.1% and Meta was modestly green. So this wasn't a clean AI or memory verdict, but it definitely wasn't the broad follow-through maybe some were hoping for. Asia is bifurcated in the same way today. KOSPI is up around 0.7% and Samsung has gained 4.1%, but SK Hynix is only up 0.4%. One strong Samsung session does not fix the technical damage across memory, especially while MU and NVDA are still struggling in the US. NBIS reports this week which will be interesting but other than that I'm generally just watching for 200DMA levels to add risk in memory names should they get there.

Crypto majors remain quiet. BTC is around $64.2k this morning, ETH is near $1,884 and SOL is around $76. BTC and ETH are modestly green while SOL is basically flat, but all three still feel detached from the larger moves in rates, oil and tech rather than outright strong. However, stuff is absolutely kicking off on chain. In Robinhood land we saw STONKBROKER and PONS continue their rallies, while in the meme world TENDIES, CASHCAT, HMMCAT were all up over double digits on increasing volumes. The biggest mover was a token called UP which is up 400% after a detailed ecosystem partnership with StonkBrokers. The latter is set to push its launchpad live this week, and it will be interesting to see if it can provide a competitive threat to Pons which has strongly regained its position as the top marketshare while printing $140-180k daily protocol revenues for the past few days (hence the rebound). In Solana, we saw $STONK, a platform that allows you to launch a token that is paired vs "anything", clumb about 100% to hit a $15M mkt cap before retracing to $12M. Elsewhere $ANSEM continued to rise while MANLET, a coin rumoured to potentially be endorsed by Ansem was up something like 1700%. TLDR - plenty of crime, but also plenty of real and genuine movers...and there's been some real cashflow stories in protocols with a lot of experimentation onchain. The age of AI has broken down development barriers (for better or worse) but I do believe that is a positive thing for "creativity onchain"...watch out for it over the next few weeks and months. Good luck today.