TQ Morning Briefing
Treasury yields are pulling back after Monday's 24-year high. Google signed a 20-year nuclear deal with Constellation Energy. Trump allowed red-dyed farm diesel on highways as diesel prices hit records.
Yields Took a Breath. Futures Are Pointing at a New S&P Record.
The bond market blinked first this morning. The 10-year yield fell to 5.275% from Monday's close of 5.31%, and the 30-year eased to about 5.636%. S&P futures are up about 0.5%. WTI is down about 2.5% to $87.
The S&P 500 finished Monday just shy of its all-time high from mid-August. Futures point to a fresh record at the open. The Nasdaq already set one yesterday.
The relief is global but partial. French 10-year yields are down 9 basis points and German bunds are down 5. The pullback follows one of the most relentless stretches of bond selling in years. One morning's move proves little on its own.
BMO's Ian Lyngen said overnight that fiscal sustainability concerns are weighing on longer-dated Treasuries alongside Fed expectations. Weakness in French government debt has spilled into US rates. France, the US, Japan and the UK share the same underlying worry. Heavy government borrowing is testing how much debt investors will absorb at current yields.
Market Implication
The first question is whether the 10-year holds below 5.3% through the open. The bigger one comes Wednesday, when $39 billion in 10-year notes hits the market. This morning's easing may simply be positioning ahead of that supply. A strong auction would give the pullback weight, and a weak one would erase it.
I've Read a Lot of Mining Filings. They All Sound the Same.
This one stopped me cold.
Sitting in the filings of one small American gold company is a phrase I have never seen on a gold project: substantial support and partnership from the Department of War.
The Department of War does not partner with gold miners. Except it's partnering with this one.
Here's why. The deposit carries a second metal — one China formally banned from export to the United States. The only domestic reserve of it in the country.
Gold for the dollar war. The banned metal for the shooting war. Both from the same pit.
Washington didn't stop at words. On May 21, 2026, a federal bank voted unanimously to lend nearly $3 billion to build it. Congress got 25 days notice. Nobody objected.
When final papers are signed, funding risk goes to zero — and Wall Street re-rates the stock from speculative developer to federally backed strategic asset.
The company is about one fiftieth the size of Newmont.
Google Signed a 20-Year Nuclear Deal. The AI Power Problem Just Got a Serious Answer.
Eleven existing reactors are about to work harder for Google.
Alphabet (GOOGL) and Constellation Energy (CEG) announced a 20-year deal for 890 megawatts of nuclear power from upgrades to 11 reactors in Illinois, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Constellation will invest more than $4.3 billion in the plants. A separate 15-year agreement covers another 2,700 megawatts in the PJM power market. Constellation shares jumped more than 6% premarket.
Large data centers can draw as much power as a small city. Nuclear is one of the few carbon-free sources that runs around the clock in any weather. Google has now signed nuclear deals with Constellation, NextEra Energy (NEE) and reactor developer Kairos Power. That makes it the most active nuclear buyer among the big tech companies.
This deal breaks from the others in one key way. It squeezes more output from reactors that already exist, a process called an uprate. Uprates are faster and cheaper than new construction. The power arrives sooner, which matters most on AI infrastructure timelines.
Structural Setup
The nuclear-AI power trade now has 20-year contracts and more than $4.3 billion of capital behind it. Vistra (VST) and NuScale Power (SMR) are the read-through today. If the deal lifts the broader nuclear group, the market is treating it as a sector shift. If only Constellation moves, the market is pricing one company's contract.
Diesel Hit a Record $6.53. The White House Answered With Farm Fuel.
Fuel built for tractors can now run on the interstate. Trump signed an executive order Monday evening letting truckers and farmers use red-dyed diesel on public roads through year-end. That fuel is normally reserved for farm equipment and exempt from highway fuel taxes. Related fuel taxes are deferred on the same timeline.
The national average for diesel hit a record $6.53 a gallon last month. California reached $8.44. The order is a short-term fix. It shifts existing off-road supply onto highways without new production or imports.
The timing carries political weight. The midterm elections are November 3. Diesel costs fall hardest on truckers, farmers and small businesses, all groups both parties are courting before the vote. Record pump prices weeks before a national election carry a cost no White House ignores.
WTI is down about 2.5% this morning on reports that Middle Eastern crude flows are recovering. Diesel remains the tight spot. More crude does not automatically mean more refined fuel, and last week's G7 reserve release added barrels, not refinery capacity.
Buffett, Gates and Bezos Quietly Dumping Stocks—Here's Why
The world's wealthiest individuals are making huge moves with their money.
Warren Buffett just liquidated billions of shares. Bill Gates sold 500,000 shares of Microsoft. Jeff Bezos filed to sell Amazon shares worth $4.8 billion.
What is going on? One multi-millionaire believes they are preparing for a catastrophic event. But not a crash, bank run, or recession. It’s something we haven’t seen in America for more than a century.
The key spread today is diesel futures against WTI. If crude falls while diesel holds or rises, the crude-versus-refined split that has defined the past month is still intact. The order adds supply at the margin. The refinery bottleneck stays in place.
AMD Got a New CPU Thesis.
Tech Is Concentrating While the Rest of the Market Drifts.
Citi just added $225 to its AMD price target.
The bank raised its target on AMD (AMD) to $800 from $575 and sized the CPU market as a potential $300 billion opportunity by 2030. Citi's argument centers on Meta's (META) Muse AI agent. Agentic AI runs work across many threads at once, a workload that leans harder on CPUs than GPU-focused inference does. Citi points to AMD as one of the largest CPU suppliers to Meta's servers.
The broader tape shows how narrow the rally has become. The Invesco S&P 500 Equal Weight ETF (RSP) is down 3.6% over the past month, while the S&P 500 is up 0.7%. Tech and energy have carried most of the load. Real estate, utilities and consumer staples have absorbed the rate pressure.
That leaves tech as the market's center of gravity. When an index sits near a record while its average stock falls, the largest companies are doing the lifting. Nvidia (NVDA), Apple (AAPL) and Microsoft (MSFT) carry the most weight.
A "bloodbath" Is Coming
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The equal-weight versus cap-weight gap is the gauge today. If it keeps widening, a new S&P record would rest on chips and mega-caps rather than broad participation. That matters for durability once earnings season brings in results from smaller companies. A narrowing gap would be the first sign the rally is spreading.
Earnings today: Lamb Weston (LW) before the bell | Constellation Brands (STZ) and Worthington Steel (WS) after the close
Fed Speakers: Vice Chair Bowman, Dallas Fed's Logan, NY Fed's Williams all speaking today
Key Watch: Fed minutes from the September meeting released Wednesday | $39B 10-year Treasury auction Wednesday
Overnight: Nikkei +1.05%, Hang Seng +1%, Stoxx 600 +0.5%, WTI -2.5%
Yields Eased. Futures Rose. The Tests Are Still Ahead.
One quiet morning does not end a selloff. The 10-year sits at 5.275%, down from 5.31%, but the bond market has paused before and kept going.
Google and Constellation turned the nuclear-AI link into 20-year contracts. The diesel order showed that a record $6.53 at the pump has become a political problem as well as an economic one.
Wednesday brings the Fed minutes and the 10-year auction together. If the minutes signal patience and the auction clears cleanly, bonds get a real pause. If either disappoints, Monday's level looks like a rest stop, not a ceiling.
3 Stocks at a Major Turning Point
Something unusual is happening beneath the surface of three widely followed stocks.
In each case, the fundamentals are saying one thing... while institutional activity, management signals or the options market are saying something else.
That kind of disagreement can matter.
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Our new FREE Market Tell Special Report breaks down three of these situations, and shows you exactly what we’re watching next.