Oil fell because the President promised not to attack Iran until after November 3rd, which is not the same as the mines leaving the water. Good morning and welcome to today's market chronicle. It's Friday, October 9, 2026.
Yesterday was a selloff about a number nobody has seen. The Financial Times put OpenAI near fifty billion of annualised revenue at the end of September rather than the seventy billion the market had assumed, and the tape obliged: CoreWeave (CRWV) off more than seven percent, Oracle (ORCL) and the chip and cloud cohort down about five each, the Nasdaq off one and a quarter, the S&P down about half a percent for its second straight loss. The Dow finished up fifty points, because it owns banks and a drugstore. Then overnight OpenAI let it be known it expects seventy billion by year end, and futures turned green. The same figure, moved from past tense into future tense, repaired the damage it had caused. Nobody outside the company has audited either.
The strait is where the skipping-over happens. Trump ruled out a strike before the midterms, said the war would end immediately after the vote, and the market read the scheduling notice as peace. The blockade stays fully in force. Iranian media reported explosions in the southern Strait this morning, blamed on tankers straying into mines, and nine ships have been hit in a week. A fifth of the world's seaborne crude moves through there. Tehran has not posted a timetable.
I spent an hour this week with my notes from the eighties tanker war, when Exocets went into hulls in the Gulf for four years and Washington reflagged Kuwaiti ships under American colours to walk them out. Over that stretch oil went down, not up, because the world was drowning in crude and a burning tanker was a rounding error against Saudi spare capacity. A colleague in Geneva pointed out the eighties had no drones, which is true. There is no glut this time, so the parallel gets me to the dock and no further.
Michigan's preliminary October sentiment lands at ten, consensus near 47.7 against 48.1 last month, printing underneath a record index. Nobody will trade it. The line worth reading is one-year inflation expectations, last at 4.6 percent, the figure Warsh's committee has chosen to care about. Jeffrey Schmid speaks at half past nine.
We closed Dollar Tree (DLTR) yesterday, up about five and a half percent over eleven sessions, against eight tenths of a percent for the S&P across the same stretch. Target hit. The multi-price rollout did in two weeks what I had budgeted two months for, so the exit was mechanical and I can claim no part of it. Credit to the rule that wrote the target down in September, when the stock was boring.
Gold is near 4,191 and firmer, Brent 102.91 after yesterday's four percent squeeze, Bitcoin a shade over 82,600, S&P futures up about four tenths, the ten-year at 5.22 percent after touching 5.36 on Wednesday, its highest since 2002. That last one is the only one that will still matter in a year.
A market this relieved by a man announcing when the shooting resumes has run out of things to price except the calendar. Have a good weekend.
Salomon