The Fed meets today. The dollar's already there

Rundown · 2026-09-15

The FOMC's two-day meeting starts today, and the dollar isn't waiting for it. DXY is 99.61, up 0.22 (+0.22%) as of this morning, against Monday's close of 99.39, and the session range so far is 99.48-99.69 — closing in on the 99.80 confluence of its 38.2% retracement and 100-day moving average, a level it hasn't tested since mid-August. A quarter-point hike is priced at 84% to 91% across trackers (Polymarket 88% as of today; CME FedWatch-tracking sources near 90-91%). Futures are drifting lower across the board rather than concentrated in one sector: ES, NQ, YM and RTY are all down roughly 0.3% to 0.4%, a much quieter, broader pullback than Monday's tech-only gap. The only data before Wednesday's decision is 8:30's Empire State manufacturing index, expected at 14.8 against 20.6 prior — a sharp expected deceleration that is the session's actual swing factor, Fed meeting notwithstanding.

Overnight

• The pullback is broad, not concentrated. ES, NQ, YM and RTY futures are each down in the 0.3%-0.4% range — a contrast with Monday's setup, where NQ alone gapped 1.6% while YM barely moved. Nothing in today's tape points to one sector driving the move; it reads as pre-FOMC de-risking
• Asia was mixed. Kospi 6,694.11, +9.74 (+0.15%) as chipmakers Samsung and SK Hynix drew bargain-hunters after Monday's 3.26% rout, and the Nikkei was essentially flat, 63,484.10, -8.89 (-0.01%). Hang Seng was the laggard, 24,667.24, -250.36 (-1.00%), a fifth straight lower session as oil and yields keep weighing on Hong Kong
• Europe is broadly lower. STOXX 600 633.26 (-0.43%) · DAX 25,333.78 (-0.42%) · CAC 40 8,079.50 (-0.47%) · FTSE 100 10,648.74 (-0.46%) — uniform, modest softness rather than a single catalyst
• The AI-slowdown story kept working through Monday's full session even after futures pared their premarket losses. Data centers, neoclouds, opticals and power names stayed weak into the close, while cybersecurity names (CRWD, PANW, ZS, OKTA, QLYS, CHKP and smaller names Zscaler, Tenable, Netskope, Rubrik and SailPoint) kept catching a bid — the "more agents means more attack surface" rotation held for the full session, not just the opening print
• Trump's Iran comments moved the tape more than the news itself did. Mid-morning Monday, President Trump posted that "the failing Nation of Iran wants to make a deal, quickly and badly," pulling equities off their lows, yields down, and oil off its highs. Iran's state-linked Tasnim News later rejected the claim outright. Nothing about the underlying Oman-hosted meeting has actually changed — it is still postponed, with no new date — but the market traded Monday's session on the unconfirmed claim anyway

The Dollar & FX

• DXY is 99.61, up 0.22 (+0.22%) from Monday's close of 99.39, and approaching the 99.80 confluence (38.2% Fibonacci retracement of the July-August downswing plus the 100-day SMA) — the closest it has been to the 100.00 level since mid-August. The driver remains Fed repricing: hike odds sit at 84% to 91% depending on the tracker (Polymarket 88% today), up from 69% before Friday's CPI
• EUR/USD settled 1.1550 Monday (down from Friday's 1.1598) and is 1.1542 now (-0.07%), still digesting last week's ECB hike; the euro's 57.6% weight in the DXY basket means it's doing most of the index's work
• USD/JPY settled 154.35 Monday (up from Friday's 153.69) and is 154.80 now (+0.29%), even with oil still elevated — the dollar's Fed-repricing bid continues to outweigh the yen's usual role as an oil-importer's currency. Friday September 18's BOJ (a 25bp hike to 1.25% is priced at roughly 97% by overnight index swaps — this would be the first time in this tightening cycle the BOJ has announced in the same week as the Fed) is the next scheduled reason for that relationship to reassert itself
• USD/CAD settled 1.3902 Monday and is 1.3919 now (+0.12%); AUD/USD settled 0.7140 Monday and is 0.7132 now (-0.11%). Both are the same broad-dollar-strength story as EUR and JPY, without a specific catalyst of their own today. Thursday September 17's Bank of England decision (expected to hold at 3.75%, despite roughly 100bps of tightening priced into the next year) is 6B's next scheduled event

Energy & Metals

• WTI settled $101.39 Monday (+$1.34, +1.34%), having traded as high as $104.95 before paring gains; it's $102.60 now, +$1.21 (+1.19%), in a $101.83-$104.21 range so far. Brent settled $105.68 Monday (+$1.07, +1.02%), off its $109.80 high, and is $107.49 now, in a $106.07-$107.85 range
• The catalyst got a longer timeline overnight. Reuters cites industry sources saying repairs to Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline — the roughly 4-million-barrel-a-day route that lets Saudi exports bypass the war-disrupted Strait of Hormuz via the Red Sea port of Yanbu — could take five to six weeks, longer than the days-scale estimate circulating Monday morning. Some sources suggest limited operations could resume sooner, but the base case just got materially longer
• Diesel hit a fresh all-time high Monday. Trump attributed the move mainly to the Russia-Ukraine war rather than Iran, saying both sides had agreed not to strike each other's energy infrastructure
• Gold settled $4,351.90 Monday (-$57.00, -1.29%) and is $4,322.00 now, -$29.90 (-0.69%) — a third straight session lower. Silver settled $64.14 Monday (-$1.05, -1.61%). Gold's mechanism is unchanged from Friday: it is still trading as a rates instrument, falling alongside a strengthening, Fed-hike-priced dollar even with equities softer and a live Middle East escalation still on the tape

Where We Left Off

• Monday's RTH close: Dow 52,421 (-152.01, -0.29%) · S&P 500 7,619 (-37.02, -0.48%) · Nasdaq 26,186 (-146.62, -0.56%) · Russell 2000 2,892 (-11.70, -0.40%) — all four closed well off their worst premarket levels
• Nasdaq was the clear laggard again, confirming Friday/Monday's premarket read that this is a real AI-capex reallocation rather than a one-session air pocket. Healthcare, communications and consumer staples were Monday's leading sectors; software (specifically cybersecurity) was the notable pocket of strength inside an otherwise weak tech tape
• What carries over: Monday's late-morning recovery ran on Trump's Iran comments, which Tehran's own state media rejected same-day. That means Monday's bounce rests on the same kind of unconfirmed claim that inflated Thursday's oil spike and Friday's reversal — a pattern worth tracking rather than trusting at face value

On The Calendar Today

Time ET · Event · Consensus · Prior · Hits

08:30 · Empire State manufacturing (Sept) · 14.8 · 20.6 · USD · ES/NQ

n/a · FOMC 2-day meeting begins; decision Wed 14:00 ET · ~90% priced for 25bp hike · held prior meeting · USD · GC · ES/NQ/YM

n/a · Bank of England policy decision (Thu) · expected hold at 3.75% · 3.75% · 6B · GC

n/a · Bank of Japan policy decision (Fri, Sep 18) · 25bp hike to 1.25%, ~97% priced · held · 6J · USD

Empire State is the only live print before the Fed, and the bar is a big expected drop. Consensus is 14.8 against a 20.6 prior — a deceleration, not a contraction, but a sharp one. A number that undershoots 14.8 meaningfully would add a growth-scare angle to a week that has so far been purely about inflation and rate path; an upside surprise would mostly get ignored given Wednesday's decision dominates positioning either way.

Index Movers

• GEV (GE Vernova) sank 8.6% Monday to $874.85 (from an $881.84 open) after GLJ Research initiated coverage at Sell with a Street-low $470 target — roughly 47% below where shares traded — calling it "a cyclical gas turbine manufacturer priced as a secular compounder." Combined with the broader AI-power capex worry, GEV was Monday's single sharpest S&P 500 decliner
• NVDA closed Monday at $210.96, down $7.33 (-3.36%), the chip-specific expression of the AI-slowdown selloff. It's actually stabilizing this morning — premarket $212.58, up $1.62 (+0.77%) — rather than extending the decline. Still the largest single dollar-weight name in both NQ and the S&P, in either direction
• ORCL closed Monday at $144.79, down $5.49 (-3.65%), a second straight losing session, trading as low as $141.01 intraday. Co-founder Larry Ellison canceled his planned $7.5 billion share sale (50 million shares) over the weekend, and Oracle separately disclosed an additional $700 million restructuring charge — total reserve now near $2.8 billion — tied to funding its AI data-center buildout, which has already cost 21,000 jobs, about 13% of the company's headcount this fiscal year. Premarket is roughly flat (-0.42% to $144.10). Oracle is a top-10 weight in the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100, not the Dow
• Software broadly outperformed chips all session — a MarketWatch markets video flagged CrowdStrike, Salesforce and Best Buy specifically as names benefiting from the AI-slowdown rotation — the logic being more AI agents means more identities and endpoints to secure, or simply less capex urgency. Real, but treat individual-name percentages as unverified until confirmed
• KMB rose 0.96% to $99.09 and KVUE rose 0.73% to $17.91 Monday — real but modest moves, not the outsized pop initial reporting suggested — on a Reuters report that Kimberly-Clark is preparing asset-sale concessions to win EU approval for its $40 billion Kenvue acquisition (agreed November 2025) ahead of the European Commission's September 29 preliminary-review deadline. Both are S&P 500 constituents; a real deal update, not a new deal

What Would Change The Read

• Scoring Monday's Oman/Iran watch item: the meeting has not been rescheduled, and Trump's "Iran wants a deal" claim was rejected same-day by Iran's own state media. The market still traded Monday's session on that unconfirmed claim — the exact pattern flagged after Thursday's oil spike and Friday's reversal. Treat any further headline on this the same way until there is an actual confirmed step, not a social-media post
• The cybersecurity-for-chips rotation surviving a full session, not just an opening print, raises the bar for calling this a one-day AI-slowdown air pocket. If it holds again today and into Wednesday's FOMC, that is a real reallocation
• Watch Empire State at 8:30. It's the only scheduled data between now and the Fed, and given the 20.6-to-14.8 expected drop, a miss below consensus would be the first growth-adjacent data point in a stretch that has otherwise been all about inflation and rates
• Watch whether DXY actually breaks 99.80/100.00 during the two-day FOMC window, or whether it's fully priced already, as Friday's flat dollar-on-a-hot-CPI-print behavior suggested it might be
• Friday is triple witching — over $2 trillion in options open interest expires the same week as the Fed decision, BOE and BOJ. Historically the S&P has been negative on the event day in 12 of the last 14 years; that's a seasonal note, not a forecast, but it's a real amplifier for whatever direction Wednesday's decision sends the market

The Bottom Line

The Fed hasn't said anything yet, and the dollar is already trading like it has — DXY is a few tenths of a percent from a level it hasn't touched in a month, on odds that have only crept higher since Friday's hot core print. That leaves surprisingly little for the meeting itself to resolve beyond the mechanics: the vote count, the dot plot, and whether Chair Warsh's press conference sounds like a one-and-done or the first of two. Underneath the calm, Monday's session was a reminder that this market is trading rumors as fast as data — an unconfirmed Truth Social post moved equities, yields and oil more than anything actually verified about Iran did. With Empire State the only real data before Wednesday and triple witching sitting three days out, the setup favors a market that drifts on positioning until the Fed actually speaks, then moves hard once it does.

_For informational purposes only. Not investment advice._