Starter’s pistol jammed: Wall Street waits for CPI to fire the next shot

Wall Street came into Monday looking like a sprinter in the blocks — muscles taut, eyes forward — only to have the starter’s pistol jam. The S&P slipped, the dollar caught a bid, and traders spent the day eyeing Tuesday’s CPI probabilities like it was the next set piece in a drama that’s already running hot. Sure, Trump’s tariff extension on China should have been a market-positive headline — a 90-day stay of execution on higher duties — but it was the geopolitical equivalent of a weather forecast — everyone already knew the storm track. By the time the ink dried just before midnight, the market had already yawned and moved on.

Instead, the real chatter was in the silicon alleyways. Nvidia and AMD, two of the AI crown jewels, signed a deal that would make any K Street lobbyist blink — a 15% “tribute” to the U.S. government on every AI chip they sell to China. That’s not a tax, that’s a medieval tithe dressed up as export compliance. It’s an arrangement so unusual that it has traders running back through the footnotes, wondering how this even fits into the global trade playbook. Think less “win-win” and more “pay-to-play in China’s silicon bazaar,” with the White House manning the checkout line.

But make no mistake — this week isn’t about quirky tech levies, it’s about inflation. CPI drops Tuesday, PPI on Thursday, and together they’re the gatekeepers to the Fed’s September meeting. The market’s already drunk on rate-cut optimism, pricing an 87% chance Powell pulls the trigger next month. That’s nosebleed territory for cut fever, and it leaves plenty of room for a hangover if the data comes in hot. If we print north of consensus — say 0.4% month-on-month instead of the neat 0.2% headline and 0.3% core economists have penciled in — the Fed’s “rate cut corridor” could turn into a conundrum cul-de-sac. Sticky inflation plus an economy that refuses to roll over is a lousy backdrop for rushing into cuts.

And here’s the kicker — tariffs haven’t even shown their teeth yet. Right now, big-ticket items — cars, appliances, electronics — are still clearing out at pre-tariff prices. Once that pipeline runs dry, price tags will adjust, and they won’t be shy about it. Apparel, furniture, footwear — we’re already seeing the first green shoots of price pressure there. Give it a few months, and 0.4%+ core prints could become the norm, with long-end yields grinding higher as the bond market figures out the Fed’s not coming to the rescue on cue.

Lurking behind Tuesday’s CPI is the other grenade — the July fiscal balance. June’s $27bn surplus was a statistical mirage, driven by one-offs. July’s set to swing hard in the opposite direction. We could be staring at a $300bn deficit — not the $244bn from last year, not the $221bn from 2023, but something fatter and uglier. Tariff revenue was pitched as the magic plug for the fiscal hole, but so far it’s like bailing water with a pasta strainer. If the economy slows, tax receipts fade, and that gap only gets wider. That’s a problem for Treasuries — and by extension, every portfolio leaning on the “rates will fall” story.

Bottom line: this week’s CPI might still give the “nothing to see here” crowd a last clean headline, but we’re moving into a different phase. The tariff tide is coming in, the fiscal cliffs are getting steeper, and the Fed’s September runway is looking shorter by the day. Traders aren’t just watching the data — they’re watching for the moment the narrative flips. And when it does, it won’t be subtle.

From bullion blitz to golden reprieve: Trump yanks tariff trigger at the last second

Trump just lobbed a verbal flare into the bullion market, and for once, the blast calmed the chaos instead of fanning it. After a week where gold traders were running around like vault guards during a bank heist, the President tapped out a simple Truth Social post — “Gold will not be Tariffed!” — and in a single line, yanked the rug out from under the great Tariff Panic of 2025.

Last week’s US Customs and Border Protection ruling had blindsided the market like a rogue algo in the overnight session — one minute you’re sipping your espresso, the next you’re staring at a $3,534 print on Comex and wondering if you’d missed a coup. The idea of slapping duties on bullion — the sacred cow of cross-border capital — was about as welcome as a margin call on a Friday afternoon. It was the first time the US had even floated taxing gold in this way, overturning April’s White House assurance that bullion would be excluded from the trade war theatre.

The CBP’s curveball set off a $100-plus spread between New York futures and London spot — the kind of gap you could drive a Brinks truck through. Banks scrambled, refiners hoarded, and Swiss exporters — who process 70% of the world’s gold — suddenly looked like they’d been left holding the bag. The irony? Just days earlier, Switzerland’s president had failed to cut a tariff deal with Trump. In the back rooms of Zurich and Geneva, that CBP notice probably felt like a retaliatory love letter.

But Monday afternoon in New York, the market’s pulse finally slowed. Spot gold shed 1.2% to $3,357, Comex futures cratered 2.5%, and the front-month contract posted its biggest one-day fall in three months — down $86.60 to $3,404.70. The “long gold at any price” crowd had to admit, this was one of those rare political tweets that traded like a rate cut.

Still, the episode leaves scars. Tariffs on bullion may be off the table for now, but the fact that they were even in play rattles the global gold machine. This wasn’t just about a week of whipsaw — it was about New York’s credibility as the world’s bullion benchmark. Traders know the flow map has been redrawn before — sanctions, VAT tweaks, and refining scandals have rerouted tonnage overnight — but to have the US threaten its own market’s liquidity? That’s like a casino owner turning off the lights on a Saturday night.

For now, Trump’s “all clear” buys back some stability, but the message is clear: in this White House, even the golden calf isn’t untouchable. And in the bullion pits, that’s the kind of uncertainty you can’t hedge with a forward contract.

Tariff chess in overtime — Trump gives Beijing 90 days to show its hand

At the long negotiating table where tariffs are the chips and time is the dealer, Donald Trump just slid another 90 days onto the clock in his long-running chess match with Beijing. Call it a truce, call it a timeout — whatever you call it, the markets saw it coming. This wasn’t a bolt of lightning; it was the rumble you heard miles away before the storm arrived.

The move, dropped just hours before the Tuesday tariff trigger, spares China from another steep climb in the U.S. levy ladder — the one that already scaled up to 145% in April and rattled traders from Chicago to Shanghai. This extension keeps the guns holstered, but make no mistake: the barrels are still loaded.

The backstory reads like a diplomatic travel log. In May, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent brokered a détente in Geneva, cooling the April firestorm. By June, Sweden played host to another round, and now Trump’s decided not to light the fuse again — at least not yet. Publicly, he says Beijing is “dealing nicely,” which is White House code for we’ll see how nice you are in 90 days.

Meanwhile, the U.S. has dangled the shiny object China actually wants — easing chip export restrictions. Nvidia and AMD are back in the game, allowed to ship more advanced silicon to China… for a fee. National security hawks are growling, but in trade land, you don’t always get to choose your bedfellows.

Still, let’s not get romantic about this “truce.” A 30% surcharge on Chinese imports remains glued to the tape, on top of the legacy tariffs from Trump’s first term. Economists warn it’s still a tax on the U.S. consumer — slow poison for growth, with an inflation kicker if the supply chain gets squeezed again.

For traders, the takeaway’s simple: This is a pause, not a peace treaty. Trump’s deal-making style is part carnival show, part street fight — and he’s willing to smile across the table with one hand while reaching for the tariff lever with the other.

The real game is whether Xi takes the 90 days to deal… or reload.

Trader view: Dollar wakes early, Gold trips late, and markets whisper before the CPI Shout

It was one of those Mondays where the market wakes up in its bathrobe, sips bad coffee, and shuffles through the motions — all because the real show doesn’t start until the CPI curtain rises. Everyone who’s anyone is somewhere else — Sardinia, the Hamptons, maybe lost in a golf cart in Nantucket — leaving Wall Street to hum quietly under fluorescent lights. But “quiet” doesn’t mean “boring.” The dollar had a little too much espresso, gold got shoved off the high dive, and stocks sagged just enough to make you squint at your screens and wonder if folks have more pink tickets ( sell orders) to hit the machine.

NDX managed to tag a fresh all-time high in the morning — a victory lap that felt oddly hollow given AAPL, last week’s Atlas carrying the Nasdaq on its back, decided to dump some cargo after its best weekly run in five years. The Dow? The dog of the day. SPX? Just driftwood in the tide until the close, when a last-minute algo ramp tried to paint some lipstick on this Monday pig. Nasdaq losses deepened into the final hour for no obvious reason, only to reverse in the final seconds — the market equivalent of a drunk finding his dignity just before last call.

Volume was sluggish — SPX trading in a 40 bps intraday straitjacket until that closing wobble — ETFs running at 27% of the tape, just under YTD averages. Goldman pointed out something far more interesting than the day’s tape: more than half of all equity volume is now happening off-exchange, with overnight ATS activity spiking like a meme stock in 2021. Blue Ocean ATS volumes are up +124% YoY to 7.7M shares a day.

The overnight playground is dominated by the glamour kids: NVDA, TSLA, and crypto ETFs like IBIT and ETHA. The top 10 tickers make up 55% of activity — and no, contrary to myth, it’s not penny-stock degeneracy. It’s big, liquid names trading under the glow of midnight monitors.

Bonds? Narrow range, a yawn in chart form. Oil shuffled higher inside Friday’s range — an “inside day” that spoke more to trader lethargy than conviction. Crypto had its own drama — Bitcoin nearly kissed record intraday highs overnight at $122K before falling back to a $120K handle. Ethereum pushed back above $4,300, proving the weekend warriors in DeFi still have some ammo left.

The bullion pit saw the day’s most notable action after Trump clarified he wasn’t slapping tariffs on gold — crushing the futures-spot spread faster than you can say “arbitrage.” Spot gold slid back toward the top of Friday’s payroll spike range, leaving anyone who chased the move feeling like they bought the high tick at a yard sale.

The dollar spiked — maybe to remind everyone it still exists — but in the big picture, it’s still nursing a bruise from last week’s payrolls dive.

And that’s the tell: the tape isn’t dead, it’s just lying in wait. This week’s calendar is a minefield — CPI, PPI, tariffs, NVDA earnings on Aug 27th. Seasonals? Nomura calls them “not great.” If CPI runs hot, stocks could catch an ugly downdraft, but in this market, you can almost hear the dip-buying cavalry warming up in the paddock. The question isn’t whether they’ll ride in — it’s whether they’ll have the firepower to turn a stumble into another leg higher.

For now, the market is a coiled spring in a room full of bored traders. The quiet is deceptive — and the fuse is already lit.