Wednesday's tape bought semiconductors with both hands, and then Nvidia's board reportedly sat down to discuss whether it still wants its chief executive. Good morning and welcome to today's market chronicle. It's Thursday, November 12, 2026.
The rally was real enough. The S&P closed up about one and a third percent, the Nasdaq Composite about one and a half, the technology sector roughly four, led by chips and by CoreWeave (CRWV). Then the evening brought reports Nvidia (NVDA) directors were weighing whether Jensen Huang should stay in the job, tied to a foreign intelligence investigation, and the stock gave back around eight percent after hours. The board says it retains confidence in him. Both of those things are presently true.
What almost nobody traded Wednesday is the thing that happens in four weeks. Tuesday's October CPI printed four tenths on the headline against three expected, three tenths on core against two. Christopher Waller had said core at or above three tenths should put a half point hike on the December table. It printed three tenths. The ten-year went to five percent. Futures now put a quarter point hike near ninety percent, with a tail for fifty. So the tape spent Wednesday buying the most duration sensitive assets it owns, a month before the Fed hikes into a five percent long bond.
My favourite detail, and I read it twice, is that the release carries no standard year-over-year figure. Last year's shutdown ate the data. We are about to tighten policy on an inflation number that cannot state its own annual rate. Gold has broken back under four thousand, which is what an inflation hedge does when the central bank turns credibly hostile.
Which sent me somewhere adjacent. The old Geneva houses were run by partners with unlimited personal liability. There was no succession plan because the succession plan was a family, and when it failed it failed slowly and in private. They incorporated eventually and the liability went away. The names stayed on the door. Whether that says anything about a founder who disbelieves in succession planning, I do not know. It rhymed enough that I thought about it on the tram.
Ahead today, jobless claims at half past eight and existing home sales at ten, plus several Fed speakers. On a morning when the index's largest company may or may not have a chief executive by the weekend, I would not expect housing data to move much.
No single trade is worth the paragraph today, which is its own kind of report. The Mosaic Mid-Horizon sleeve is down about eleven percent over the last twenty sessions. The S&P 500 ETF (SPY), total return, is down about one and a quarter over the same stretch. That is not a rounding error, it is a gap, and it gets the length a good month would get.
Gold is near 3,931.02 an ounce, though my screens spread sixty dollars and I would not swear to the cents. WTI settled near 86.47, Bitcoin is about 73,501.00, S&P futures are off roughly half a percent, and the ten-year sits just under 5.00 percent. That last one is doing most of the work.
The index is one personnel announcement away from a very different Thursday. December comes either way.
See you tomorrow.
Salomon