Dear Trader,
The Fed raised rates yesterday for the first time in three years, and stocks answered this morning by going up.
Try explaining that one to your brother-in-law.
Mark and Andrew go live again today at 10 AM ET to sort through it.
They'll cover the rally, Kevin Warsh's press conference and the fight he just picked with the White House, and a generator company that added a third to its value before breakfast because Amazon called.
Stick around when they wrap.
Andrew comes right back with Frank for a second session. The two of them say China has had its hands on what Americans read and watch, and they've found a play that comes out of it. 10:30 AM ET.
Read the three stories below first so you know what Mark and Andrew are reacting to.
This link adds State of the Market to your calendar.
The Daily News Breakdown
SIREN: Stocks rallied Thursday morning on the news that borrowing money just got more expensive. Dow futures climbed 0.7%, S&P 500 futures added 0.8%, and Nasdaq-100 contracts gained 1.1% after Wednesday's slump. Traders seem to like a Fed chair who'll actually fight inflation, even when the president yells at him for it.
Trump says he told Kevin Warsh before the meeting that "you might as well vote with the board."
Cheaper oil helped too: Brent slipped to $99 a barrel after Energy Secretary Chris Wright said Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline, the main detour around the Strait of Hormuz, should come back soon. The Bank of England held rates at 3.75% on Thursday, though three members voted for a hike.
SIGN: Kevin Warsh raised rates a quarter point Wednesday, the Fed's first hike since July 2023, and every voter on the committee went along with him. The target range now sits at 3.75% to 4%. Warsh said the economy and the job market ran strong since the July meeting while inflation stayed above the 2% target all summer.
Diesel set another record Wednesday because of the Iran war, so the man has a point.
The White House wanted the opposite, and Trump's chief economist Christopher Phelan called a hike the wrong move a day earlier. Asked about his talks with Trump, Warsh told reporters, "I've got nothing for you on the discussion with the president."
SNEAKER: Generac (GNRC), the company behind the standby generator humming next to your neighbor's garage, just signed Amazon as a customer, and the stock jumped 34.5% before the open. Generac will ship $2.4 billion of backup generators to Amazon (AMZN) data centers across 2027 and 2028. For scale, its whole data center backlog stood at $1.6 billion in July.
Amazon also picked up a warrant (the right to buy stock later at a set price) for up to 1.69 million Generac shares at about $200.93. Most of those shares only vest as Amazon's payments climb toward $8 billion.
The stock had dropped 17.3% over the past month. Caterpillar and Cummins want the same Big Tech money.