The Nasdaq has posted back-to-back record closes, NVDA printed a new all-time high Monday near $237, and the S&P 500 crossed 7,800 for the first time on Tuesday. The bond market spent most of that time trying to break the rally and hasn't managed it yet. The benchmark 10-year yield touched 5.311% on Monday, its highest level in roughly two decades. By Tuesday's close it had eased back to 5.27%. The détente is fragile, and the two events that matter most this week haven't happened yet.
Records With an Asterisk
Monday's session saw the Nasdaq close up 1.05% to 27,477, blowing past its prior record set on September 22, while the S&P 500 added 0.66% to finish at 7,773.95. Tuesday extended the move: the S&P posted its first close above 7,800 at 7,818.93, while the Nasdaq added another 0.45% to a fresh record at 27,599.79. Wednesday is trading roughly flat through midday, with the tape holding its breath ahead of the 2pm minutes release.
The non-consensus read here: this isn't multiple expansion. NVDA has gained roughly 14% since its August 26 earnings report and is up about 24.8% year to date, outperforming AMD and Intel in the second half, though AMD itself is up 195% year to date. That's earnings-driven momentum, not the kind of euphoric multiple-stretch that unravels cleanly. We own NVDA as the anchor of our chip pillar, and a record close on a week when the 10-year is threatening 5.35% is the thesis working, not luck.
Bond yields pulled back from their highest levels since 2002 Tuesday as oil prices retreated below $100 a barrel and Treasury Secretary Bessent insisted the government's debt load can be tamed. The relationship between oil and Treasury yields appears to be decoupling. Yields rose Monday even as oil fell on mounting supply. The yield story runs well beyond oil, with heavy corporate borrowing and rising fiscal deficits adding to supply pressure. Bessent's commentary is worth watching as a signal on the Treasury's buyback appetite, one of the planks in our financial repression frame, but one reassuring sentence doesn't move the math.
VST showed up in the session data with a gain of +11.61% on heavy volume this week, a reminder that firm power generation for datacenter PPAs doesn't need the rate environment to cooperate to get re-rated. VST is part of our power book, and that kind of move on no obvious single catalyst is the datacenter buildout bottleneck thesis slowly getting priced in.
Traders are pricing roughly an 80% chance the Fed holds rates unchanged at its next meeting, according to CME FedWatch. December hike odds, meanwhile, stood near 81% as of Monday. The market is saying: skip October, hike in December. The minutes today will tell us whether that read is roughly right or whether the hawks inside the committee were louder than the statement let on.
On the chip pillar: chip stocks took a premarket breather Tuesday after a sharp October rally, with NVDA the lone major name in the green. AMD closed up +2.80% while MU slipped -1.73%. MU's give-back is not a thesis break. The stock has moved substantially since the September 30 earnings print, and digestion at this level is healthy. The HBM cycle is intact.
Thursday and Friday: The Minutes Echo, Then the Long Bond
Today at 2:00pm ET, the Fed releases the minutes from its September 15-16 meeting. The minutes cover the two-day debate that ended with the first rate hike since 2023, and they drop at 2pm Eastern, leaving two hours of trading to react. The official statement said inflation "remains elevated" and that the move would "support a timelier return" to the 2% goal. What we don't yet know is whether a significant faction pushed for 50bp, or whether the discussion around the forward path was more divided than the unanimous 12-0 vote implied. Without a major inflation or jobs print, the bond auctions and Fed commentary set the tone this week, and a soft 30-year auction landing on top of hawkish minutes would be the bearish combination for risk assets.
Thursday also brings a 30-year Treasury bond auction and a speech from Fed Governor Christopher Waller at the Central Bank of Turkey's Istanbul Economic Forum. Waller's speech text and Q&A are both expected. Given the elevated ISM prices reading and where the long end is trading, Waller's tone on inflation is the live variable. A hawkish Waller plus a weak 30-year auction is the scenario that tests whether equities can hold their record closes. Initial jobless claims Thursday are expected at 200,000 versus 197,000 previously. Claims near that level don't change the October hike calculus much, but a surprise spike would.
Economists expect the preliminary October University of Michigan consumer sentiment index Friday to dip to 47.7 from 48.1 in September, and the survey may attract extra attention with November 3 midterm elections approaching. Prices were the dominant concern driving the index lower in September, and consumers' inflation expectations are what Fed Chair Kevin Warsh and the voting members will be watching. If the 5-10 year inflation expectations component firms from its current 3.4%, that's the Friday print that matters more than the headline sentiment number.
September CPI lands October 14, not this week. That's the number that actually moves hike odds. Everything between now and then is tone-setting.
Our read: the tape has earned a bit of respect this week. Two consecutive records with the 10-year near 24-year highs is not what the consensus expected coming off a brutal September. The chip pillar is leading, the power book is getting noticed, and IBIT has held constructive as Bitcoin trades as a liquidity-risk-on expression rather than an inflation hedge. The minutes this afternoon are the swing factor. Hawkish language revealing a serious 50bp debate would be noise the market can absorb; explicit committee consensus that another hike is likely before year-end would be harder to dismiss at these equity levels.
Nova One Capital and the Nova X Convergence Fund hold positions in securities discussed in this letter, including NVDA, MU, AMD, TSM, VST, MSFT, AMZN, GOOGL, CRWD, IBIT, ABNB, and TSLA. This document is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. It is intended solely for the use of the recipient and may not be redistributed without permission. Past performance is not indicative of future results. All investments involve risk, including the possible loss of principal. As of October 7, 2026.