Calendar › Morning Rundown › 2026-11-10

Waller backs a hike either way. CPI decides size

Rundown · 2026-11-10

The Fed spoke before the data did. Speaking in London at 04:00 ET, Governor Christopher Waller backed a December rate hike even if October CPI comes in cooler than expected, and said a half-point move could be warranted if it runs hot. Fed funds futures now price a December hike at about 94%, up from about 83% yesterday, and the 2-year is about +6bp overnight from Monday's 4.56% (US Treasury). Index futures have split on it: NQ −0.21%, ES +0.05%, YM +0.34%, RTY +0.06% against Monday's settles, all inside narrow overnight ranges. Crude is still bleeding its war premium, WTI −1.24% overnight after −4.38% Monday, and gold −0.79%. CPI at 08:30 (consensus 0.3% headline, 0.2% core) no longer decides whether the Fed hikes, on Waller's telling. It decides by how much.

Overnight

• Where futures sit, about 06:30 ET, against Monday's settles: YM +0.34% · ES +0.05% · RTY +0.06% · NQ −0.21%. The split is the morning's story: the rate-sensitive, chip-heavy Nasdaq is giving a little back after Monday's rebound, while the Dow holds a bid.
• Ranges since the 18:00 reopen, as reference only. ES has ranged a tight 0.43% (0.11% below to 0.32% above its settle) and sits in the lower half of it. NQ has ranged 0.60% (0.49% below to 0.10% above) and sits mid-range. Both opened near their highs and have drifted lower since; the Nasdaq leg is being put down to Waller.
• Asia extended Monday's AI rebound. The Kospi rose 4.39%, Taiwan's benchmark 2.52% and the Nikkei 2.87%, all led by chip names. Hang Seng +0.44%, Shanghai +0.08%. Nikkei futures have slipped since Tokyo closed, in line with NQ.
• Europe is near record highs on cheaper oil. DAX +1.23%, Euro Stoxx 50 +1.11%, FTSE 100 +0.38%. Banks lead. Brent below $90 for the first time since August is easing Europe's inflation worry more directly than America's.
• What broke while the US was closed. Waller, above. The Information reported that Jensen Huang's relationship with an alleged Chinese intelligence asset helped route at least $7.5 billion of Nvidia chips through Chinese firms; Nvidia's board opened its investigation on Sunday, and this is the first report putting a dollar figure on the exposure. Anthropic's IPO draft prospectus shows a raise of up to $64.4 billion, which would be one of the largest on record and puts a large new supply of AI equity in front of the same investors who own NQ. Russian and Ukrainian officials meet today for US-brokered talks, their first since February.

The Dollar & FX

• DXY +0.07%, near the top of a 0.26% overnight range. For a morning when the 2-year is up 6bp on a Fed governor, the dollar has barely moved. The rate differential has widened in its favour; the market is waiting for CPI before pricing it.
• 6J: USD/JPY +0.18%, the pair carrying what dollar move there is. It is the purest expression of US front-end yields, and it is doing what the 2-year is doing. Japan's Ministry of Finance confirmed a record intervention in July, so a hot CPI that pushes this pair hard is where Tokyo's tolerance gets tested.
• 6A: AUD/USD −0.22%, giving back part of Monday's risk bid even as Asian equities rallied. It is the weakest major this morning.
• 6E: EUR/USD −0.04%, 6B: GBP/USD −0.07%, 6C: USD/CAD +0.07%. All three are flat into the print. The loonie is not following crude lower this morning; the broad dollar is the bigger driver, as it has been all week.
• Fed pricing. Fed funds futures put the chance of a December hike, to 4.00-4.25% from 3.75-4.00% (Fed), at about 94% as of 06:25 ET, against about 83% on Monday and 75% a week ago. We have this from one futures-based tracker only this morning. The FOMC decides on 9 December.

Energy & Metals

• CL: −4.38% Monday, −1.24% overnight. WTI extended its slide after President Trump said on Monday that he would hold off on new strikes against Iran after appeals from countries in the region, including Qatar's prime minister. Brent: −5.85% Monday, −1.49% overnight, below $90 for the first time since 31 August and about 23% off its 30 October high, per Reuters.
• The mechanism. The war premium built into crude since the summer is coming out on diplomacy, and the physical market is backing the move rather than fighting it: dated Brent has weakened, OPEC output rose in October, and JPMorgan estimates a global surplus of about 1.4 million barrels a day. Attacks on shipping around Hormuz continue but have not escalated. Overnight, crude was down more than 2% in London before trimming the loss into New York. EIA's Short-Term Energy Outlook at 12:00 and API stocks at 16:30 are today's scheduled oil events; the EIA weekly report moves to Thursday because of Veterans Day.
• GC: +0.97% Monday, −0.79% overnight. Gold rose with lower oil and a softer dollar on Monday and is giving some of it back this morning.
• Why gold is offered. This one is clean: Waller pushed up the 2-year, and a higher real-rate path is gold's main headwind this year. Lower oil had been helping gold by easing the inflation-and-hike story; Waller has just said the hike comes anyway. CPI is gold's real test, because a hot print now means a bigger hike, not just a hike.

Where We Left Off

• Monday's RTH: Russell 2000 +3.15%, Nasdaq Composite +2.74%, S&P 500 +2.34%, Dow +2.15% (AP's figures agree to the rounding). It was the S&P 500's best day since 8 April. All 11 S&P sectors rose; energy lagged as oil fell.
• Treasury yields Monday: 2-year 4.56% (+5bp), 10-year 4.88% (+2bp), 30-year 5.26% (unchanged) (US Treasury, 9 November). The front end has now risen 10bp in two sessions on payrolls and hike pricing, before Waller.
• What happened. Chips led the rebound from last week's selloff, with the Philadelphia semiconductor index up nearly 7%: AMD +13.26%, Broadcom +8.78%. Nvidia fell 4.27% to its lowest close since 7 April on the board investigation. Lower oil helped airlines and cyclicals, and two of the Dow's biggest lifts were Caterpillar +7.21% and Goldman Sachs +4.67%.
• What carries over: the rally ran on lower oil and a chip bounce, and neither is a rates story. Monday rallied as if the Fed question could wait for CPI. Waller has now said it can't, at least for the direction. The open tells you whether a rally built on the oil slide survives a front end that is moving the other way.

On The Calendar Today

Time ET · Event · Consensus · Prior · Hits

04:00 · Fed's Waller speaks (done) · n/a · n/a · USD · GC · NQ

06:00 · NFIB small business optimism, October (printed 97.8) · 97.7 · 97.9 · USD

08:15 · ADP weekly employment pulse · n/a · 16.75K · USD

08:30 · CPI m/m, October · 0.3% · 0.6% · USD · GC · ES/NQ

08:30 · Core CPI m/m, October · 0.2% · 0.3% · USD · GC · ES/NQ

08:30 · CPI y/y, October · 3.9% · 3.7% · USD · GC

08:30 · Core CPI y/y, October · 2.8% · 2.6% · USD · GC

08:30 · Real earnings m/m, October · n/a · -0.5% · USD

08:55 · Redbook retail sales y/y · 9.3% · 10.4% · ES

09:35 · Fed's Logan speaks · n/a · n/a · USD · rates

11:00 · NY Fed household debt, Q3 · n/a · 18.8T · USD

12:00 · EIA Short-Term Energy Outlook · n/a · n/a · CL

13:00 · 10-year note auction · n/a · 5.300% · rates · USD · GC

13:30 · Fed's Bowman and Schmid speak · n/a · n/a · USD · rates

16:30 · API crude stocks · n/a · -5.267M · CL

Consensus: TradingEconomics. Release times from TradingEconomics, cross-checked against the Reuters CPI poll (0.3% headline, 2.8% core y/y). After the close, CoreWeave reports. Bowman speaks again at 18:30. This week: Wednesday is Veterans Day, with the bond market closed and stocks open. Jobless claims, EIA crude (moved to Thursday 12:00) and the 30-year auction land Thursday; PPI Friday.

CPI at 08:30 is the session's fulcrum, and Waller has changed what it decides. An in-line 0.2% core keeps the hike at 25bp and leaves today's overnight ranges as the reference. A hot core, 0.3% or more after September's 0.3%, puts the half-point Waller raised on the table, and that hits the 2-year, USD/JPY and gold first. A soft print does not take the hike off, on Waller's account, so the relief would show in NQ and gold more than in the hike odds. The 10-year auction at 13:00 is the second test: weak demand at a sub-5% yield after a hot print would extend any move in rates.

Index Movers

Ranked by index contribution. Monday's moves close to close.

• NVDA −4.27% Monday. One of the largest weights in the S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100, and the only big chip name that fell on a day the semiconductor index rose nearly 7%. This morning's report of $7.5 billion in chips routed to China is a sharper allegation than the board's Sunday statement. Early pre-market trade was little changed; we could not verify a figure directly.
• AVGO +8.78% and AMD +13.26% Monday. Both are large S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 weights, and together they did more for NQ than Nvidia took away. Money that left Nvidia went to its chip peers rather than out of the sector.
• MSFT +2.75% Monday. A top-three weight in the S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 and a Dow member. Reuters reported overnight that Microsoft is pressing the White House not to ban Chinese data-centre components, a policy fight that bears on its data-centre buildout.
• GS +4.67% and CAT +7.21% Monday. Goldman is the highest-priced Dow member and Caterpillar among the highest, so these two moves account for a large share of YM's gain. Cyclicals are holding Monday's gains better than chips this morning, which is part of why YM leads.
• CRWV reports after the close. Not an index heavyweight, but it is the most-watched AI-debt name, and a weak report would land on NQ through Wednesday's open.

What Would Change The Read

• Scoring Monday's calls. We asked whether the market would keep separating Nvidia from the AI trade: it did, with Nvidia −4.27% while AMD and Broadcom led the chips higher. We asked whether a Fed speaker would push back on December: none did, and Waller went further, taking hike odds from about 83% to about 94%. We asked whether the Qatar meeting would produce anything: Trump said afterwards that he would hold off on strikes, and WTI fell 4.38%.
• Whether core CPI prints 0.3% or higher. That is the line between a hike that is priced and a half-point that is not. Watch the 2-year and USD/JPY in the first minute.
• Whether the dollar finally reacts to rates. DXY has ignored a 6bp rise in the 2-year this morning. If it starts to follow after CPI, EUR/USD and gold take the hit together.
• Whether NQ's Nvidia problem becomes a sector problem. On Monday the money rotated within chips. If AMD and Broadcom start trading with Nvidia after 09:30, the governance story has become an index story.
• Whether crude's slide meets support in the data. The EIA's outlook at 12:00 and API at 16:30 are the first official reads since the diplomacy turned. A surplus that is growing keeps the pressure on CL, and the CL drop has been the main thing holding inflation expectations down.

The Bottom Line

Monday was a relief rally that assumed the Fed could wait for CPI; this morning a Fed governor said it doesn't have to. That has moved the front end, nudged NQ lower and taken some of gold's bid, while the dollar and the Dow have barely noticed. Tight overnight ranges are what a market waiting for 08:30 looks like. On Waller's account, CPI no longer decides whether there is a hike, it decides whether the hike is 25bp or 50bp, and the 2-year will tell you which within a minute of the print.

_For informational purposes only. Not investment advice._