Volatility Pulse - It was the best of times..it was the worst of times
Record highs, record lows, same day
The S&P 500 closed at a record high on October 6 with 48 NYSE stocks hitting 52-week highs and 126 hitting 52-week lows. The last time the index set a record with more than two lows for every high was late December 1999 ( I know, I know - I'm getting tired of the 99 references too)
Source: @jasongoepfert
Stocks near highs, junk bonds near lows
SPY is within 1% of its 52-week high while HYG sits within 1% of its 52-week low. The last five times this happened, the S&P lagged its typical return over the next quarter in four of five, with a median of negative 3.5% versus the usual positive 3.7%.
Source: Renaissance Macro Research
GPU rental prices are climbing again
Nebius raised H100 rental prices by 17% and B300 prices by 21%. GPU rental pricing is rising across every generation, reversing the deflation trend from earlier this year.
Source: I/O Fund
Four stocks, almost ten trillion dollars
Nvidia, Broadcom, AMD, and Micron are worth a combined $9.8 trillion, up from $1.7 trillion three years ago. Nvidia alone at $5.8 trillion is larger than the entire GDP of Japan.
Source: I/O Fund
Texas asked for 474 gigawatts. It got 4.
ERCOT's interconnection queue went from 63 GW to 474 GW in 18 months, more than five times the state's record peak demand. Only 9.5 GW is approved and about 4.3 GW is actually running. The rest is duplicates, speculation, and developers holding their place in line.
Source: a16z
Bloom Energy found the shortcut
Bloom Energy is up more than 228% this year. It sells fuel cells that can power an AI data center on-site in 55 days, skipping years-long waits for the grid. One Oracle data center went live in less than two months.
Source: Unusual Whales
Greece borrows cheaper than France now
France's 10-year bond yield is 4.79%. Greece's is 4.43%. Nobody who lived through the PIGS crisis would have predicted the country that needed two bailouts would borrow more cheaply than France in 2026.
Source: @johnarnold
Half of bond ETFs are underwater
About 50% of all bond ETFs now show negative one-year returns. The asset class that is supposed to be the safe half of a portfolio is losing money for half its holders.
Source: @EricBalchunas
The trade gap hit $105.6 billion in a single month
The US trade deficit in goods and services hit $105.6 billion in August, widening $34.4 billion in just two months. Outside the tariff-shock months, that is the deepest deficit on record.
Source: @kevrgordon
Korea's buyback machine just stopped
Samsung and SK Hynix ran through their record buyback programs faster than expected, spending 55 trillion won. With the buying done, the only structural prop under the Kospi has disappeared.
Source: @zerohedge
Financial execs are selling their own stock
The insider seller-to-buyer ratio for financial sector executives hit 2.10 in Q3 2026, the highest reading across all eleven S&P sectors and nearly double the market average of 1.20. The people running the banks are trimming.
Source: @KobeissiLetter
Just Because...
Vikings Gave Kittens to Newlyweds as Wedding Gifts
In Norse culture, cats were sacred to Freya, goddess of love and fertility. Vikings gave a new bride a kitten as a housewarming gift, considered essential equipment for starting a household. The same culture known for pillaging monasteries also had an official pro-cat wedding tradition.
