#CPI #Bitcoin #OilPrice #TheBrilliantMrPedro
The pulse in 5 lines:
Stocks: Nasdaq slipped Tuesday on chip weakness. Futures were up into CPI.
Oil: Brent is holding above $100 after Houthi strikes on Riyadh’s airport. Hormuz is still closed.
Crypto: Bitcoin is flat in the low $80Ks, and ETH keeps losing ground to BTC.
Housing: The 30-year fixed hit 7.4%, the highest since late 2023. Sales are frozen.
Creators: Big retail keeps moving into TikTok Shop. Small creators who post a lot still win.
This morning’s market looks like five unrelated stories. It isn’t. Trace any of them far enough and you reach the same place: the price of money, and the oil shock pushing it higher.
Here’s how they connect.
🛢️ Oil: Day 225
Readers who’ve followed this publication since February know this one well.
Over the weekend, Brent closed Monday up $1.93 at $106.65 a barrel, its highest level since September 15, with WTI at $93.74. The trigger: Iran-aligned Houthis claimed a Saturday attack on Riyadh’s international airport that killed 13 people and injured more than 300. Then two tankers were reportedly hit near Oman and in the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday. crudo sube tras los ataques a arabia saudita lo que eclipsa el acuerdo de trump sobre diesel 4501418 +2
This shock didn’t start this weekend. The Strait of Hormuz has now been closed for 225 days, and Brent is up about 44% since the closure. Even with partial workarounds, Persian Gulf oil exports in September were only at 81% of their pre-war level. goodcarbadcarua
Post 1 of this arc called it the Hormuz Test. Seven months later, the test hasn’t ended. It’s become the background condition for every other price on this page.
Reuters via La República · UA.News / OilPrice · Oil Crisis Monitor
📈 Stocks and the CPI print
The Nasdaq closed lower Tuesday on chip weakness and a mixed start to bank earnings. Futures rose into this morning’s main event: the September CPI report, released Wednesday, October 14 at 8:30am ET. regardsofwallstreet
[INSERT CPI PRINT HERE: headline m/m and y/y, core m/m and y/y, vs. consensus]
Why this print mattered more than usual: the Fed raised rates in September and has signaled another hike by year-end, while the 10-year Treasury hit a 24-year high driven by inflation worries from soaring oil. A hot print strengthens the case for that second hike. A cool one gives the market room to breathe. virginiabusiness
That’s the whole chain: Hormuz → oil → inflation → Fed → yields → everything else.
BLS CPI release · CPI release schedule
🪙 Crypto: Bitcoin waits, ETH bleeds
Bitcoin is flat around $83,500, waiting on the same number as everyone else. Earlier this week, it slipped 1.5% to about $82,400 as liquidations topped $304 million across roughly 89,000 traders, with investors watching the CPI and PPI reports on October 14 and 15. bitcoinbitcoin
The more interesting signal is the ETH/BTC ratio, which fell another ~4.6% last week. Tom Lee is warning of a near-term Ethereum selloff [ADD LINK] while holding to his long-term thesis. Back in August, Lee argued that ETH/BTC had broken its long-term downtrend because markets were starting to price in tokenization and agentic AI running on Ethereum. webull
The sovereign read: this is the short squeeze lesson from Post 3 again. Lee’s structural case (Wall Street moving assets onchain, AI agents transacting on blockchain rails) may well be right. But a structural thesis doesn’t stop a ratio from falling for months while rates stay high. When the 10-year is at a 24-year high, the asset with a story about the future loses to the asset with a story about scarcity. Know which one you hold and why.
A major Wall Street firm called crypto a price “inflection point” this week. Inflection points only make sense in hindsight. Position for the range, not the call.
Bitcoin.com News · Benzinga on Lee’s ETH/BTC thesis · [Tom Lee near-term warning: ADD LINK]
🏠 Housing: Frozen by the rate, not by prices
This is the clearest transmission of the oil shock into ordinary lives.
Freddie Mac’s 30-year fixed averaged 7.4% as of October 8, the highest since November 2023. A year earlier it was 6.3%. The MBA’s survey is even higher: 7.49% in the week ended October 2, a 19 basis point jump. US Mortgage Rates Climb to Highest Since 2023 +2
The war link is direct. Mortgage rates are up about 1.4 percentage points since the US-Israeli strikes on Iran began in late February, tracking the 10-year Treasury yield, which topped 5.3%. virginiabusiness
Prices are holding mostly because sellers won’t cut. They’re locked into low-rate mortgages and have no reason to give that up. Volume freezes, prices stay high, and affordability disappears for new buyers. One model says affordability could return in about five years if rates fall to around 6% and prices stay flat. Notice how much that “if” depends on Hormuz.
And it’s political: the rate jump lands four weeks before the elections that decide whether Republicans keep control of Congress. Expect housing to be a top talking point through November 3. staradvertiser
Trading Economics / Freddie Mac · Reuters via Virginia Business · Freddie Mac PMMS
🤖 AI: The pullback is the signal
The week’s notable AI story isn’t a launch. Companies that rushed into AI adoption are starting to pull back as the fallout grows [ADD LINK: Guardian]. That fits a wider pattern: one industry panel said it underestimated how fast companies cut staff for AI, then quietly began rehiring once agents couldn’t cover the work. redmondmag
Elsewhere, Workday released new HR and finance AI tools, and a study found AI coding tools still fail basic accessibility standards.
This connects to the same chain. AI projects that looked cheap at 4% money look different at 5%+. The pullback isn’t a rejection of AI. It’s a repricing of AI projects that only made sense when money was cheap. The companies that keep using AI will be the ones that tied it to real work. The rest were running on the cheap-money era.
Masters of Data via Redmond Mag · [Guardian: ADD LINK]
🛍️ TikTok Shop: Big retail moves in, small creators still win
Quieter week, one useful data point. UK tech retailer Currys launched a TikTok Shop trial with a curated range of health and beauty, coffee, audio and seasonal products. THG Commerce runs the strategy, trading, shop management, weekly livestreams and affiliate management. The audience is large: more than 30 million monthly TikTok users in the UK. Currys joins TikTok Shop +2
The details matter more than the headline. The announcement doesn’t specify commission rates, named creator partners, sales targets or the trial’s length. Big retailers are moving in with managed agencies, but the platform still rewards whoever posts the most videos. That favors the small creator with nothing to lose and a phone, not the corporate brand with an approval chain. affiversemedia
For the sovereign individual, that’s the useful part of a frozen economy: when credit is expensive, the cheapest form of capital is attention you earn yourself.
The Sovereign Read
Put the board together:
Oil is the cause.
CPI measures it.
The Fed reacts to it.
Yields pass it along.
Housing, crypto and AI budgets absorb it.
Creators route around it.
Nothing on this page makes sense without the first line. Seven months ago this publication called the Hormuz closure the defining test of the year. It still is.
The sovereign position hasn’t changed since February: hold the crisis hedge, hold the long thesis, keep cash for optionality, and don’t add leverage while a binary event is pending. Today’s binary event was CPI. Next is the Fed’s October 28–29 meeting. After that, the midterms.
Read the board. Not the headline.
— The Brilliant Mr. Pedro
www.pedrojdeleon.com
The Fed hiked in September and signaled another. Here’s what real money says about October 29.
Day 225. The market is pricing when, or whether, Hormuz reopens. Every other number on this page depends on the answer.
Polymarket data shown for analytical purposes. Terms of service restrict trading for US persons.