AMD told its partners to expect ten percent higher prices next quarter, and the market bought the stock as a disinflation trade. Good morning and welcome to today's market chronicle. It's Tuesday, September 22, 2026.
The Nasdaq closed at a record yesterday for the first time since June, up a little over two percent. Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) rose about ten percent and crossed a trillion dollars in market value, the fourth American chip company to do it. Intel (INTC) and Arm Holdings (ARM) each added twelve. The catalyst was Muse, the agent from Meta Platforms (META) that has sat atop the free App Store chart for days, read by the tape as proof that inference will need server CPUs too. Maybe it will. The other catalyst was a supply chain report that AMD has told partners to expect a ten percent price increase in the fourth quarter, which the same tape read as pricing power rather than as, you know, prices.
The ten-year fell about three basis points and crude fell for a fourth straight session, described everywhere as easing inflation concerns. What eased was one man's willingness to sit in a room. Trump said he was probably open to meeting Pezeshkian on the sidelines of the General Assembly, Tehran has passed its conditions to Qatar, and Iranian officials would like written American guarantees on sanctions first. So the impulse that pulled gold off its highs and bonds back from five percent is a conversation that has not happened, between governments still negotiating the terms of negotiating. Hormuz remains largely shut. The war is in its eighth month.
I keep reaching for August 1990, which does not fit. Iraq took Kuwait, crude doubled, the market bottomed in October before a shot was fired, and everyone there learned that you buy the invasion. It worked once, and has been quoted ever since by people who were not there. It does not map, because in 1990 the Fed was cutting into the shock and this one hiked into it, twelve to nothing, first increase in more than three years, with sixteen of eighteen officials sketching in another before the year is out.
Ahead today, Williams, Jefferson and Barkin at one o'clock, and Trump at the UN. Ten Fed appearances this week and PCE on Friday, and the market has already decided what all of it means.
We closed F5, Inc. (FFIV) yesterday, up about nine percent over sixteen sessions while the S&P managed roughly a third of one percent. The exit was mechanical, an optimal exit at the daily standard deviation, and I had no opinion about it. The August thesis was an enterprise hardware refresh cycle, a thing that runs for years and has little to do with the technology tape, which is why it worked while the tape did nothing, and then ran away without it.
Gold is near $4,350 after settling around $4,307.63 yesterday, WTI is about $92.88, S&P futures are up a tenth, and the ten-year sits at roughly 4.97 percent, a rounding error from five. Bitcoin is somewhere between $81,000 and $86,000 depending on the screen, and I will not pretend to know which.
A record high underwritten by a chatbot and a price rise, and a peace nobody has written down. See you tomorrow.
Salomon