Economists: Hot PPI shows Fed's work is not done

US September PPI 6.3% vs 5.3% expectedUS October Philly Fed business index +20.9 vs +28.4 expectedUS October Empire Manufacturing index +25.50 vs +10.25 expectedUS retails sales for September 0.8% MoM vs 0.3% estimate. Prior month 1.3%Canada August manufacturing sales +1.5% vs +1.1% expectedUS initial jobless claim 199K vs 200K estimateUS August business inventories +0.4% vs +0.4% expectedUS weekly EIA crude oil inventories -8557K vs -288K expectedAtlanta Fed GDPNow holds at 3.6% for Q3 as consumer spending outlook improvesMarkets:WTI crude oil up $2.50 to $97.59US 10-year yields down 9.9 bps to 5.09%S&P 500 up 0.4%Gold up $61 to $4166CHF leads, USD lagsThe most-interesting development of the afternoon in US trading was that an AI focused fund that may have had $40 billion AUM blew up. The fund's latest holdings correspond strongly with some of the worst performers lately so the story fits, including top holdings Nebius, Bloom, Lumentum and CoreWeave. After that rumor began to do the rounds, there was some dip buying in stock markets that snowballed. The thinking may follow what happened with Situational Awareness where once it was clear what happened, the buyers returned.

(Kitco News) - After a solid overnight rally, rising inflation fears are limiting gold’s recovery Thursday, as higher producer prices show that the growing threat is unlikely to abate anytime soon. The U. S. headline Producer Price Index (PPI) jumped 1.3% in September, following August’s revised 0.5% increase, the U. S. Labor Department announced Thursday. The latest headline data was significantly hotter than expected, as economists had forecast a 0.6% increase. “The September increase is the largest advance since rising 1.7 percent in March 2022,” the report said. Over the last 12 months, headline wholesale inflation increased 6.3%, above the expected 5.3% rise. The report noted that this was the biggest annual increase since December 2022. Core PPI, which strips out volatile food and energy costs, rose 0.7% last month, above economists’ consensus forecast of 0.3% and following August’s upwardly revised 0.3% increase. Annual core PPI rose 5.0%, above consensus estimates of 4.4%. The gold market is holding on to its overnight gains above $4,100 an ounce. Spot gold last traded at $4,151.90 an ounce, up more than 1% on the day.

(Kitco NewsWire) – Spot gold and silver prices are solidly higher in early U. S. trading Thursday, rebounding from Wednesday's sharp losses as falling Treasury yields, a weaker U. S. dollar and renewed safe-haven demand outweighed another upside U. S. inflation surprise. A technology-led global equity selloff pushed investors toward government bonds and bullion, even as September producer prices rose much faster than expected. At the time of writing, spot gold was trading near $4,147.50 an ounce, up $43.00, or 1.05%, while spot silver was trading near $56.620, up $1.10, or 1.99%. Market positioning remains caught between persistent inflation and growing concerns about the sustainability of the AI-driven equity rally. September producer prices surged 1.3% on the month and 6.3% from a year earlier, the largest monthly advance since March 2022. Producer energy prices jumped 10.8%, including a 20.3% increase in gasoline. The report followed Wednesday's stronger-than-expected CPI, which showed headline inflation rising 0.6% on the month and 3.7% annually. September retail sales increased 0.8%, exceeding forecasts, although sales excluding autos and gasoline rose just 0.2%.

Bitcoin, Nasdaq futures and Asian stocks rally as stronger-than-expected China GDP and falling oil prices lift risk appetite.

The service will initially support bitcoin, ether and the stablecoins USDC, EURC and EURAU, with the bank managing clients’ wallets and private keys.

Layer-1 blockchain network Qubic halted operations Sunday after an attacker reportedly exploited weakly generated wallet seeds to drain approximately $1.4 million from more than 1,400 accounts, according to the project. In a statement on X, Qubic said the network was halted at tick 85,371,949, where it remains paused at the time of writing. Qubic said the vulnerability affected wallet seeds generated using any browser on an iPhone or iPad, Safari on a Mac until Oct. 18, 2026, or the Qubic iOS app before July 2025, leading to 2.94 trillion Qubit (QU) stolen. “87.1% of the drained funds never left the Qubic network and remain frozen in place,” said Qubic. “The remaining 12.9% was sent to MEXC, whose team froze the receiving account within about an hour.” The Qubic theft is the latest in a series of attacks tied to weak wallet seeds. In July, Coldcard disclosed that attackers had stolen funds from wallets whose seeds were weakened by a firmware bug. Similar flaws affected Trust Wallet’s browser extension and the Libbitcoin Explorer tool in 2023.