Dear Trader,
Voz is sitting in with Mark on State of the Market this morning at 10 AM ET, and the three stories below give them plenty to argue about.
The 10-year is near 4.8%, Brent is over $98, and next week's Fed meeting is starting to look like a hike instead of a pause. LIV Golf went bankrupt because its Saudi backers, squeezed by the same Iran conflict pushing oil higher, stopped writing checks. And Google just committed $15 billion to Finland because that's where it could find power nobody else had claimed.
There's one thread running through them: When borrowing gets expensive, backers walk away from golf leagues and sign 22-year nuclear deals instead. Mark and Voz will cover all three, plus whatever else the tape throws at them before the open.
This link adds State of the Market to your calendar.
The Daily News Breakdown
SIREN: Stocks fell as long-dated yields kept climbing and oil kept ripping. The 10-year is sitting near 4.8%, Brent cleared $98, and Goldman is now floating $120 a barrel if the Iran standoff drags on. Here's the part that matters: traders are starting to price a Fed HIKE at next week's meeting. Energy led early Tuesday, up more than 1%, while rate-sensitive financials and consumer discretionary slipped. Chips managed a small bounce, with Nvidia (NVDA) in the green. If you've been ignoring the yield story, you've got about a week left to do that. Oil is adding to the inflation math, and the Fed meets right in the middle of it.
SNEAKER: LIV Golf filed for Chapter 11 on Tuesday, and its biggest stars are now its biggest creditors. Jon Rahm is owed roughly $7.5 million, Bryson DeChambeau $5.7 million, and Dustin Johnson north of $5 million, with Cameron Smith and Tyrrell Hatton further down the list. Player claims total more than $64 million. That's what happens when Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund stops writing checks after burning an estimated $5 billion to $8 billion since 2021. The twist for the golfers: the filing voids their contracts, so they can shop themselves back to the PGA Tour while they wait to see how much of that money ever shows up. A London private equity shop, BC Partners, says it'll bankroll a 2027 relaunch, assuming a judge signs off.
SIGN: Google is dropping 13 billion euros, about $15 billion, on AI infrastructure in Finland, its biggest single investment in Europe. Alphabet (GOOGL) will build at least three new data centers and expand the Hamina site it's run out of an old paper mill since 2009, all over 2027 and 2028. Why Finland? Cold air, open land, and power you can actually get, which is scarce across most of Europe right now. Google even signed a 22-year deal with Fortum to keep the Loviisa nuclear plant running into 2050, plus new wind and a 94-megawatt battery. Hyperscaler capex is still going up, and it goes wherever the electrons are. Nordic power and grid names just landed a very large customer.