Fed Rate Cut Decision LIVE: Market Reactions and Macro Analysis for Crypto and TradFi

Summary

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CRYPTO 101 - "Fed Rate Cut Decision LIVE: Market Reactions and Macro Analysis for Crypto and TradFi"

Date: October 30, 2025
Hosts: Bryce Paul & Brendan Viehman

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Overview

In this special live edition of Crypto 101, Bryce Paul and Brendan Viehman provide real-time reactions as the Federal Reserve announces a 25 basis point (bips) rate cut. The episode breaks down the implications for both traditional finance (TradFi) and crypto markets, analyzes Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell's live press conference, and explores what these policy moves mean for Q4 2025 and beyond. The hosts blend sharp macro analysis with actionable crypto insights, fostering community interaction and sharing unique perspectives on pivotal events.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Fed Rate Cut: Initial Reactions and Market Context

Timestamps: 00:00 – 05:05

• The Fed cuts rates by 25 basis points, a widely expected move ("baked in" by betting markets like Polymarket, 98.8% odds).
• Immediate focus is on the importance of Powell’s press conference over the rate headline itself.
• Bryce: “The presser means more than the cut unless there's some crazy surprise. The market is baked in... Now the most important part is the presser.” (04:05)

2. Market Response & ‘Chop Zone’ Analysis

Timestamps: 03:14 – 05:05

• Bitcoin bounces above $110,000, showing strength amid macro volatility.
• Brendan refers to recent market action as “chop” between 108-115k, with bigger moves hinging on Powell’s tone.
• Brendan: “I say this all the time. I’m a perma bear. Bitcoin’s over $110,000. And I think Q4 we’re going to run even harder.” (03:16)

3. Interplay with Tariffs, China-U.S. Trade, and Quantitative Tightening

Timestamps: 09:21 – 12:00

• China-US tariffs are de-escalating, considered a positive macro development.
• The Fed to end quantitative tightening (QT) December 1, signaling shift towards easing.
• Ending QT seen as historically bullish for risk assets like stocks, gold, and crypto.
• Brian: “When we start easing...asset prices go higher and that’s gold, real estate and obviously stocks and crypto.” (10:45)

4. Gold vs. Bitcoin: Rotational Flows and Thematic Macro Plays

Timestamps: 12:00 – 13:45

• Discussion on how gold rolling over often precedes Bitcoin rallies:
  Brendan: “Gold tops. It’s topped in 2020, 2025...right below when gold tops, it looks like bitcoin goes on this parabolic move just in time for the Santa Claus rally.” (12:55)

5. Fed Dissent & FOMC Dynamics

Timestamps: 13:45 – 16:14

• Note on split opinions at the Fed: some want no cuts, others push for a 50bps cut, reflecting growing divergence (“split decision”).
• Bigger implications for future Fed composition with potential political changes in 2026.

6. Crypto ETFs and Institutional Adoption

Timestamps: 15:43 – 23:00

• Solana ETF Launch: Bitwise Solana ETF crushes first-day volume records; not a BlackRock ETF, but signals institutional interest.
  • Brendan: “Solana ETF breaks 2025 record for launch in their first day volume. Some huge numbers there...I think the ETF is going to bring massive support to the price to the network, bring more attention to developers.” (16:14)
• Bank & Tech Adoption:
  • Banks like JP Morgan, Bank of America, BlackRock, and others are engaging in different levels of crypto adoption (trading, custody, ETPs, payments).
  • IBM unexpectedly launches digital asset services for US institutions, signifying Big Tech’s move into crypto rails.

7. Risk, Sentiment, and Opportunities

Timestamps: 25:47 – 27:38

• Altcoin season index lower than late 2022; hosts point to extreme fear as a contrary signal.
• Brendan: “There’s just real opportunity across the market. That’s...something we’re trying to educate people on every day.” (27:20)

8. Broader Macro & AI Layoffs

Timestamps: 28:40 – 31:22

• Implications of mass layoffs at UPS, Amazon, and other giants.
• Questions about AI’s replacement of human labor vs. cyclical economic caution.
• Brian: “Is AI here? ...I think when it does happen, I think it will be sort of like a little bit of a rug pull situation...” (31:58)

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Jerome Powell’s Live Press Conference

Timestamps: 33:07 – 64:53

Summary of Powell’s Main Messages:

• Rationale for Rate Cut:
  • Slowing labor market and downside employment risks justify moving rates closer to neutral.
  • Inflation remains above target (2.8%), partly due to persistent tariffs (“tariff-driven inflation”).
• No Commitment on December Cut:
  • “A further reduction in the policy rate at the December meeting is not a foregone conclusion. Far from it; policy is not on a preset course.” (33:30)
• End of QT:
  • Balance sheet runoff stops Dec 1; signals shift towards balance sheet stability and future easing moves.
• Internal Disagreements:
  • Powell repeatedly highlights “strongly differing views on the committee”, with two dissents—one for deeper cuts, one for none.
• Implications of Data Gaps:
  • Ongoing government shutdown may obscure labor/inflation data for December decision, making the Fed more cautious. “If you're driving in the fog, you slow down.” (57:34)
• Discussion on AI:
  • Powell notes AI’s impact on investment but downplays its sensitivity to interest rates compared to prior technology booms:
    “I don't think that the spending that happens to build data centers… is especially interest sensitive… It's based on longer run assessments.” (55:18)
  • Fed is closely monitoring announced layoffs and bifurcated (K-shaped) economy with lower-income consumers struggling.

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Market & Community Reaction (Hosts’ Commentary)

Timestamps: 64:53 – 80:00

• Immediate price drops in S&P, Nasdaq, and crypto following Powell’s comments – $300M liquidated in crypto alone.
• Both hosts felt the price move was an overreaction; markets rebounded quickly.
  • Brendan: “Felt like a little bit of an overreaction to me. We all knew the 25 bips was coming... He said there’s no guarantee we’ll cut rates in December. The decision will depend entirely on data.” (66:46)
• Hosts reiterate need for patience—initial market reactions (“wick down”) often reverse within minutes/hours.
• December Fed meeting now holds higher stakes; possibility for a “Santa Claus rally” hinges on that outcome.
• Brendan: “I just think...the odds are for a chop for a little bit longer...but the stakes are a little higher for December’s rate cut.” (71:26)
• Final word: No major surprises, no actionable change—markets likely to consolidate and chop before the next catalyst.
  • Brian: “Don’t overreact...it feels like that don’t overreact type of scenario and possibly...the cycle could extend.” (67:56)

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Other Crypto Highlights & Fun Notes

Timestamps: 73:18 – 79:14

• Memecoin Trends:
  • Pump.fun (Solana’s leading memecoin platform) sees strong buybacks and hints at forming a “cup and handle”—community watches closely.
• Hosts debunk AI bubble comparisons with dot-com era:
  • “Now, pets.com is a real company, but back then it was just like, hey, pets.com, popcorn.com, this.com, you just threw a .com on it, and you had millions of dollars...” (74:21)
• Caution and optimism: Market cycles are faster; information and sophistication increasing among investors.

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Memorable Quotes & Timestamps

• Brian: “The presser means more than the cut unless there’s some crazy surprise.” (04:05)
• Brendan: “Gold tops...bitcoin goes on this parabolic move just in time for the Santa Claus rally.” (12:55)
• Chair Jerome Powell:
  • “A further reduction in the policy rate at the December meeting is not a foregone conclusion. Far from it, policy is not on a preset course.” (33:30)
  • “If you're driving in the fog, you slow down.” (57:34)
  • “We're absolutely committed to returning inflation to 2%...there should be no question that's where we're going.” (54:53)
  • "I don't think [AI investment] is especially interest sensitive...it's based on longer run assessments." (55:18)

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Critical Takeaways

1. Fed moves closer to neutral, no guarantee of further cuts without data clarity.
2. Markets initially overreact but quickly revert—expect continued volatility and chop.
3. Macro headwinds (tariffs, shutdowns, AI disruptions) inject new uncertainty for both TradFi and crypto.
4. Cryptocurrency markets continue to see structural improvement through ETFs and relentless institutional adoption.
5. Community sentiment remains cautiously bullish for Q4; upcoming events (Fed, ETFs, macro) may be key catalysts.

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For Next Steps & Community Engagement

• Join their paid/pro community or follow on social (X: @crypto101pod) for real-time updates.
• Watch for December’s Fed meeting recap and year-end analysis.

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This summary captures the breadth and energy of the live Crypto 101 episode, spotlighting both thoughtful macro analysis and actionable crypto market guidance, with attribution and key moments for deeper reference.

Transcript

[TiVo]

Foreign.

[Brian]

Everybody. Welcome Back to the Crypto 101 podcast special edition here. It's the Crypto 101 podcast presented by Gemini, your bridge to the future of money. But we are doing a special episode today, a little bit of a market update. You see on the screen there, we've got Brian. It's Brian and TiVo. We're going to go over what is going on in the markets because breaking news, the Fed has cut interest rates by 25 basis points. If you want to sound fancy and you want to sound cool, Brian, you just say 25 bips. You say bips. It makes you feel like you work on Wall Street. It makes you feel like you're in the know. 25 bips. We're going to go over what the Fed's doing. We're going to cover the live press conference of Jerome Powell. That happens usually right around 2:30. So 20 minutes, 25 minutes from now. In the meantime, we're going to go over the rate cut of 25 bips and going to see the reaction in the markets and then we're going to dive into the crypto markets as well and kind of give you a midweek rundown. If you guys were here earlier in the week with Brendan and I, we told you we were going to try and do this, we are here for you. This is what we're calling a 4U show. We're here for you. We're short staff this week. Brian's been doing double duty, working hard. I'm doing double duty. I'm also moving. I'm in the middle of a move right now. Brian saw it in the background. My, my poor mother's here helping me. We got movers here, we've got plumbers here. But that's no excuse on Fed Day, Brian. We have to get here and give something for the people we love. Everybody joining us, we've got comedy video. We've got Mike Sore Mike. Sorry, hi. From Poland. God, what a way to, to start the stream when you're getting a hello from Poland. But Brian, how are you and how are the markets looking?

[Brendan]

Yeah, the markets are starting to bounce back a little bit here. We got somebody else coming from London. I mean, we're just, we're just, we're just touching. Everybody in the world shout out.

[Brian]

And I love it.

[Brendan]

You made me laugh whenever you said the 25 bips that. We've never talked about that. But any of my buddies are like financial advisors. Whenever I'm talking, I make sure to like, hey, we're expecting 25 bips. So I sound like a little bit cooler out there. You nailed that.

[Brian]

Yeah, you got to do the bips. You got to do the bips. I'm trying to feel cool today.

[TiVo]

I got.

[Brian]

I don't know why. Just I'm moving. There's all this stuff everywhere. I saw these cool orange glasses and I was like, you know what? The future's bright. Let's toss them on. But Brian, we'll start there. We got. We just got the official announcement. It is 25 basis points. That was. I mean, again, we talk about polymarket. Maybe we'll pull up some odds from there in a little bit for the press conference, have some fun. But it was a 98.8% for 25 bips. So, you know, as. As thought for the markets. And a little bit kind of a bounce off the bottom. It looked like bitcoin kind of jumped up. Let's pull up. We'll pull up Coin Market Cap here to start people. And so again, just to cover the rundown here, we have a sheet. We're going to go through the sheet and hit it until we see Jerome pow pop on. And then I'm going to switch over to the broadcast. We can watch that, commentate. And again, if you're in the chat, especially, you know, towards the back end of this episode when the press conference goes on, we'd love to talk to you. You know, this is more of a fun environment to go back and forth and just, you know, have a little bit of a rundown, per se. But let me pull up Coin Market Cap and Brian, let me, let me just pick your brain. What are you seeing in the markets today? Because you are definitely have been more plugged in than I have.

[Brendan]

Yeah, I mean, we've been.

[TiVo]

We've.

[Brendan]

We're continued. We talked about some past rundowns that we've been in. This a little bit of a chop zone from like 108 to 115. It does feel like we're still chopping. This 25bips was pretty much baked, in my opinion. But we're getting a little bit of a pop right before the FO FOMC meeting here. I, I do believe whatever stance Powell, like, how is he going to sound more dovish, is going to sound more hawkish is going to definitely probably affect these prices slightly. But I don't know, man, it feels strong. I say this all the time. I'm a perma bear. Bitcoin's over $110,000. And I think the Q4 we're going to run even harder. The 25 bips, everybody and their mother kind of knew that was coming and. But we're seeing a nice little pop here. Nothing, nothing to complain about.

[Brian]

Maggie May saying, don't worry TiVo, you're always cool. I was like, that's way too kind, Maggie. Way too kind on a day here. But yeah, we're, we're in the chop zone and I think we, the way we kind of have always talked about these, and I stand true to this is the presser means more than the cut unless there's some crazy surprise. Right? So the market is baked in and the betting markets have told us 25 bips. That's what we're getting. Now. The most important part is the presser and it's kind of how Jerome Powell makes a statement and then especially the questions kind of what does he give? What does he give? Anything. He's usually pretty stone cold for the most part. Except for exact. Not exactly a year ago. It would have been a year ago, I believe in December. That December meeting he threw out an absolute, you know, red flag and scared everybody and the markets tanked and he ruined the Santa Claus rally. And that was, that was a very sad event for the bulls. But normally he's pretty stoic and doesn't give too much away. But people pepper him like, what are you seeing on the economy? Is there, you know, any fear of recession?

[TiVo]

Any.

[Brian]

And what are you seeing in tariffs? Because again, they're getting all this data and they, you know, they claim to be, you know, a forward looking Fed, but they're also a backwards looking when it comes to this data. And then we can, you know, as we covered on this program all the time, how some of this data is just so outdated. We pulled up truflation the other day, you know, somebody that we've had on the show before to kind of get, get, give people a different look into all these data points. But just looking on my screen, the, the, the two year, the ten year seems to be going up a little higher, which again, it's an initial reaction of what the markets are doing. We'll have to see what Fed chair Pal says. But anything before, before we move on to crypto specific stuff. Brian, any, any macro thoughts before we dive into our sheet? All right, Crypt Nation fam. Let's pause for one second and talk about an important issue going on right now, and that's SIM swap attacks. SIM swap attacks are becoming a serious threat, especially in crypto. If someone gets control of your phone number they can access your bank accounts, your exchanges, email, even your private messages. That's why the Crypto 101 podcast is partnered with Afani. It's America's most secure mobile service offering a guaranteed protection against SIM swaps with added privacy. Since launching, not one single Afani user has ever been SIM swapped and for some reason, if it ever does happen, you're backed by up to $5 million in insurance against financial losses. This is literally why we chose to partner with them. It is our favorite thing about Afani is the insurance policy of up to $5 million if it does happen to you. Afani runs on either AT&T Verizon network and you get to choose which one. There are no contracts and it is super easy and seamless to sign up. You also get a 60 day money back guarantee so there's zero risk in trying it out right now for our listeners. You get 99 off when you sign [e-mail] crypto101. That's afoni.com crypto101 or check the show notes below for a link. These days your phone number is probably more valuable than your Social Security number, so make sure it's protected with a fan, all right. Crypt Nation Fam Are you interested in effortlessly growing your Bitcoin portfolio? Because I know I am. The Bitcoin credit card by Gemini earns you Bitcoin back on every purchase. Use it like any credit card you buy lunch, you get gas, any of your weekly grocery expenses and you'll earn up to 4% back instantly in Bitcoin or one of over 50 other cryptos straight into your account. All that with no annual fee. And right now you can grab $200 of bitcoin. That's right, a $200 bitcoin welcome bonus with the Gemini credit card. It is the easiest way to start building your Bitcoin stack. Go to gemini.com card to learn more. Terms apply. See the link in the description for more information regarding rates and fees. When it comes to showing appreciation, the.

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[Brendan]

Yeah, not nothing too crazy other than it it looks like these China US tariffs are starting to de escalate quite a bit. I, I think I read a headline that soybean traders are absolutely euphoric right now because they got, they got a pretty big order. Probably a sign of good faith by China in the upcoming meeting. I, I think we've talked about this quite a bit. There's been a lot of posturing, a lot of people going back and forth about these tariffs. Hopefully it all works out and we don't have any more China tariff scares, but it's looking like it's going to be some positive news.

[Brian]

Yeah, I just, I definitely just replied to, I saw that. I'll pull this up. It was, you know, China buys three US Bean cargoes ahead of Trump she meeting and it's just you get the beans, beans for you. Beans, beans, beans. So Trump and GR plan to meet tomorrow and again if that, if that comes out again a lot of that's posturing and photo ops and there's, there's more back deal stuff getting done than what's going to happen tomorrow in person. But if that's a positive event with, with a good presser which you know this administration loves good press. Yeah, I don't know. That could be a catalyst. We're cutting rates. We're in this zone. So what's going to break it out of us? That's what we're all trying to find out and covering for you weekly on the show. I did just see something. Let's pull up this. We're live. We're clicking around live here folks. Let's see. We're the Federal Reserve to end quantitative tightening on December 1st. We heard that. I was showing when I held up my phone to the mic before we went live. You heard that. So that's again the end of quantitative tightening. What, what do we do when we end tightening? We begin easing. So a lot of people are saying, again, the financial economists are saying actually where we are right now with rates and how everything's going, we're actually at, basically we're tight slash neutral at best. And so we're heading into this easing cycle. Again, it's, it's a little above my pay grade when it comes to the economics of it. But the history shows when we start easing and you know, the Fed starts working and doing its balance sheet, asset prices go higher and that's gold. That's real estate and obviously stocks and crypto. But we'll focus on the crypto part. But just to check in, I wanted to get your take on gold because we covered this with Brendan the last two shows. So any thoughts on you as like, I pulled up a chart, it was like, hey, when gold plunges, you know, bitcoin seems to rally. And while we don't have a subscription to Bloomberg, we do know that, you know, gold has been ticking below, let's see here, five day, you know, kind of bouncing under that $4,000 level. So anything you're taking away from that, Brian?

[Brendan]

Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm still a big fan of gold. It's a nice hedge against the dollar. A bigger fan of digital gold, bitcoin. Open up that next tweet from Tom Lee when he compares when, when gold kind of has a pullback and we see bitcoin kind of surge up.

[Brian]

While we do want to credit Tom Lee, Brian, we, we were showing this on the program last week. So the 20th, I'm just saying, hey, hey, listen, this student has become the teacher. We gave this just for a little, A little like credit where credit's due. Brendan was, Brendan was giving me my flowers on Monday, but we covered this. What is it? Thursday last week I brought this up. I was like, hey guys, just a heads up, when gold rolls over, sometimes, you know, bitcoin starts to rip. And then, yeah, I guess Tom saw. Well, Tom's of. Tom's a friend of the program, obviously, and I guess he listened to the rundown over the weekend and then got this chart and made his thread here. But yeah, break this down. We just want your opinion as well.

[Brendan]

Yeah, shout out. Tom, it's good to have you in the chat here. But yeah, as you can see, Gold tops. It's topped in 2020, 2025. And then right below when gold tops, it looks like a bitcoin goes on this parabolic move just in time for the Santa Claus rally. It's been an underwhelming uptober, but some unexpected things in the macro. Of course things aren't always perfect, but again, I'm so bullish on everything that's happening with this administration and the crypto market in Stablecoins, all this integration with Visa and Western Union and Solana ETFs. It's the time to be paying attention right now. And please, I only hope that that bitcoin chart looks like that for 2025. What Tom Lee tweeted.

[Brian]

Yeah, yeah, and I saw that you put on there bit mine buying more which we did cover the other day with Brendan. They now have 2.8% of the Ethereum supply, which is super exciting. One, one final point on the Fed here and then we're going to really dive into, you know, just kind of our sheet here. I saw this get put out and we heard this when we were listening to the TV before we went live was again there was, there was a descent. So there are two dissents. Somebody wanted no cuts and then somebody wanted 50 basis points. Now the 50 basis point has been there for a couple. Now there's been always one Fed governor for the last couple that have wanted the 50 basis points. Scott Besant was even calling for that as well. And again with the administration where it's going, the next kind of chapter after Chair Powell is going to be that Trump is going to get to kind of basically usher in the new Fed governor. So it'll be interesting. We've kind of covered that a little bit, but that's going to be a 20, 26 narrative that's really going to pick up. But until then, it looks like there's a little bit of a, a split decision there in the Fed which is always interesting to keep tabs on. So let's, let's do a little rundown. We got 2:15, so we got about 15 minutes to kill and then we can obviously take some questions in the chat. We appreciate everybody being here. Rob's here from Kenna, Kenosha, Wisconsin on Wisconsin. East coast lobsters here from Canada. Comedy video. Matt's here. Matt's ready for the BTC breakout. Drop where you are guys. If you're new, welcome that bottom right. Give us a subscribe and toss it a thumbs up. We appreciate everybody kind of being here on our episode Slash Live stream. But let's do some quick hitters. So Nvidia. Nvidia hits 5 trillion in market cap overnight. Is that the first time a stock has hit 5 trillion? Brian, do you know. Sorry to put you on the hot seat there.

[Brendan]

I'm not sure off the top of my head, but it's a massive number.

[Brian]

Yeah, that's crazy.

[Brendan]

It's only good for probably our bags in the long run.

[Brian]

Couldn't be, couldn't be more there. That is a massive lumber. Oh, the Solana ETFs are. What's the bitwise ETF crushes expectations with record breaking first day. This, this Bitwise ETF actually looks really, really exciting. So what, what kind of stuff did you learn about that? I actually think I tweeted something so I'm gonna go try and pull that up. But what are your thoughts on the Solana etf?

[Brendan]

Yeah, I mean it's not a blackrock Solana etf. I mean that's the, that's the big daddy that we want to get involved with this Solana ETF and eventually see that. But these, they're not going to be able to keep their, keep their butts in the seats here with all of this volume. And Solana ETF breaks 2025 record for launch in their first day volume. So some huge numbers there. I'm a Solana fan. I'm a big fan of it. I think the ETF is going to bring massive support to the price to the network, bring more attention to the developers and networks building on Solana and it's just a key platform in crypto. So love to see that this was a massive success on the first day.

[Brian]

Yeah, that's awesome. And I'm working to get our friends from Bitwise back on the program for the end of the year. We always like to do an end of the year show with them. We usually touch base with them at least twice, sometimes three times a year. My thought was to try to get a couple of them on this time. Maybe have like a bit wise roundtable with Bryce and Brendan. I thought that could be really fun. Quick thoughts before I go run down the, the, the tweet that I pulled up. We got Scott from Toronto. God. Canada's in the house today. Brian. Yeah, let's crypto with Kelly Springfield, Oregon Maggie May Mike Jaker When McRib from Jaker. That's hilarious. When McRib. It's actually an honestly good question. So let's look at this B Soul because what I thought the coolest thing was is they're trying to maximizing again the, the staking aspect. The which again for traditional stock people will be very intriguing for them to learn like, oh wow, a 7% quote unquote dividend would be amazing to get that into the etf. I think that's going to attract a lot of people to educate about this. Zero percent fees, obviously a little asterisk there, limited time only. But they. The bitwise Bitcoin ETF was also the lowest fee when it launched and I think that was a good again marketing strategy for them. Let's see. Potential Solana is headed into the mainstream and we think this is just getting started. We've covered this when we talked about kind of the Ethereum ETF and how, you know, Solana had the narrative and then now Ethereum has had the narrative for the back half of the year. And again, you know, Solana was the price action wasn't really doing that well. And with these ETFs going live, a lot of people are saying, hey, the kind of the, the playbook's there, right? I mean who. You know, the. Tom, Tom Lee is obviously been a huge catalyst for Ethereum with its bit mine and then sbet. So. So how many people out of the woodwork, what companies are going to start doing a true Solana treasury strategy? Is there some Wall street veteran that has the backing of traditional Wall street that's going to come out and do this or is there a company that might do this? That's going to be something to look for. But yeah, I think, you know, it's a floodgate event. But what we learned from the Bitcoin ETF and the Ethereum ETF is it's not like it's not these go live and then the price rockets 50% in a week or two. It takes time.

[Brendan]

I love this Solana ETF. But what I love even more is that McRib comment from Jake. Because I don't know if everybody knows, whenever the MCRIB gets announced, Bitcoin just goes parabolically bullish and whenever they take it away, we always get Bitcoin bearish. So I'm actually looking online to find out when the McRib is released because I'm just absolutely fired up. In a serious note, this Bitcoin etf, I mean Solana ETF is huge news. I think it's something we've been all waiting for. And we're gonna get more players bringing in more ETFs, probably other cryptos like XRP and you know, the list Goes on with other people being mentioned with these ETFs, but this Solana one's big. I've been waiting for it for, for quite a long time. So love to see Bitwise making it happen.

[Brian]

No, 100%. And to stick with Bitwise and just again, credit, credit to me. Well, first of the apologies, because I was running around before we went live here and it was asking Brian to do the sheet and I was a little miscombobulated. But credit to me for just tweeting out a bunch of things that I knew I wanted to talk about. Because we can keep pulling up some of these tweets from the Crypto 101 podcast on X. If you are on X, you need to follow rypto101pod. If you're not on X, as always, we highly suggest you join because that's where a lot of financial crypto news breaks. So here another one from Bitwise. Banks are buying in crypto adoptions by institution. And I tweeted out, I'm like, listen, study what the banks are doing and then make your own decisions. So I have no personal financial advice for anybody but the banks that have owned the financial space for the last, you know, what, 50 to 100 years, you know, you might want to study what they're doing. So let's see here, we got crypto trading and custody, private crypto funds, crypto ETPs, crypto enabled payments and tokenization. Let's see, is there anybody that's doing all of them? Interestingly enough, there is. There's only one, and it's Jamie Diamond. It's JP Morgan Chase. Just absolute classic from our guy friend of the program, Jamie Dimon, just a huge crypto nut. He's such a crypto fanatic that he would go on like the press tours as we covered the last couple weeks and you know, saying it's a scam and hating on bitcoin and crypto, all while building the crypto rails to do all five of these. And then you can see on there, bank of America, BlackRock, the London Stock Exchange, MasterCard, Morgan Stanley, these are all Avisas down there. Wells Fargo, these are all names that we all know. And then they're getting involved in crypto in some form or fashion, most of them doing multiple ways. So a nice little study here and a nice little summary chart by bitwise.

[Brendan]

Yeah, smart money is buying crypto or adopting crypto, I should say. And again, it's. That goes hand in hand. Like why are we seeing prices not absolutely surge? This is Just my own thoughts and some people have mentioned this on the timeline as well. There are probably some OG crypto whales out there with hundreds of millions and billions of dollars that follow the four year cycle and that, you know, they're selling some of their positions, which is perfectly normal and natural. Actually that makes me even more bullish because it just continues to distribute Bitcoin, you know, to smart money, to more retail traders and they can't sell forever. And I think this is, I don't know, I'm, I'm just absolutely primed for this next leg up and I think Q4 is going to be really something special and. But you nailed it with this tweet. Just what are the banks doing? What are they looking at? We see major crypto adoption by institutions. They're not doing it for a 10%, three month hold. This is the long term here. This is the future of finance. And I mean that.

[Brian]

Yeah, and again it's, you gotta, you gotta watch what they do and not what they say. Especially with the names on this list. I mean they're. Yeah, man, it's, it's, I mean that's a list. Just to see it like that as a visualization, you know, kind of everybody's working on in the background, but to see that really brings it all together. I saw another thing this week that really caught my eye. You could, you could say, you could say this company is the reason that I'm here. Because my first job ever out of college for those who are not up to date on their TiVo history, was IBM. People forget that they think I'm just a barstool guy, Brian. They think I'm just a content guy. But people forget my first job was at IBM Watson, which was the AI unit of IBM. Early adopter to AI. We're talking 2016 here. Folks living in New York City working at IBM, they didn't have a crypto program at the time. They were obviously early to AI. And now the supercomputers people are saying that IBM has kind of the best kind of leg way for some of these supercomputers because of all the hardware that they've had over the years. And then their consulting company, they have such a big flywheel effect in technology. But did you see this where IBM launches new bitcoin and crypto services for US institutions, a digital asset haven and will offer custody and payments for US businesses and governments by year end. Did not see Big Blue IBM coming out of the woodwork with this because I haven't, you know, since I've been here for years doing kind of the weekly shows and researching. I haven't seen anybody, I've seen former IBMers and you see former Google and former Amazon people, people from former tech make their way into crypto and come on the show and interact with us, but not current. So I thought this was really interesting.

[Brendan]

Yeah, it's super interesting. I mean it's, hey, IBM Bitcoin, welcome. It's. Get this, get this party going.

[Brian]

It's, it's a headline. I mean I try, I didn't see any real specifics. Digital asset. Haven't thought custody was interesting. But does that lead to more of that treasury strategy where like IBM's not a bank. So then why, why do they want to do custody? Is it that integration of technology and money management and banking? Is it the future? Is IBM going to try and carve out JP Morgan and carve out, you know, bank of America and try to, you know, kind of carve itself as a custody and payments rail?

[Brendan]

Yeah, I think that's, I think that's a good look there. There's a lot of ways we could speculate with this potential, I don't want to say partnership, but potential movement here within the space. But I don't know, it's a great headline. I, I think a lot of these big Fortune 100, Fortune 500 companies, countries, they're getting their hands in the bitcoin for good reason.

[Brian]

Yeah, I saw it was going to be managed digital assets across 40 plus blockchains. So I don't know, I thought that was interesting. A little, little timeline cleanser. Here is the, the drone show from Switzerland where it's the Pac man bitcoin just eating up all the other currencies. I just want everybody to see that so you could have a little smile, little, little palette cleanser there. Before we jump into, after all this bullish news and all we always say like man, when's the pop going to be? We're ready for the pop. All the bullish news we pull up coin market cap. We were in fear last week, right? And, and just to think of this like this tab here, like altcoin season is now lower than November 2022. Let that sink in folks. Lower than November 22nd. That was when all of tech, you know, meta Nvidia, I mean these were, it was generational buying down there in 22, especially for tech firms. Obviously crypto and altcoins had its, excuse me, had its dip as well. But are you, are you that scared?

[Brendan]

I'm never scared Man.

[Brian]

I know you're not from. From what? From the picks you send me. There's never any fear over there.

[Brendan]

I have a little gamble in my blood, but that's okay. It's on the right side of things.

[Brian]

So. Yeah, any, Any thoughts around again, Fear, greed index, Always something. You know, it's one of the tools in the toolbox. But for it to dip down to 20, 22, that feels like almost throwing in the towel.

[Brendan]

Yeah, that, that, that feels a little bit reactive in the market. Can be definitely reactive there. I, I do think there's some real opportunity here. While people are feeling this extreme fear or fear, there's just real opportunity across the market. And that's, that's, you know, that's something we're trying to educate people on every day.

[Brian]

Yeah. And then speaking of education, the prophecy has been fulfilled. SPX 6900 has hit 6900. I know this was. Yeah, this was something that was early inside the community. I know that was an absolute Bryce Diamond Hands type of call where, you know, I mean, if, if you're inside the community and you've heard, you know, you know, how much the percentage was there. I mean, that was absolute buku bucks of a winner for the team and the community. But yeah, just an absolute. It was always a magnet. The prophecy has been fulfilled. Any, Any thoughts on. On the milestone here?

[Brendan]

Yeah, I mean, SPX 6900 is one of those coins out there that tells a fun story, has massive crypto whales backing it. And I don't see it going anywhere anytime soon. Meaning down. I think there's some real strength there behind the token. Hey. Their whole goal is to flip the S P500. Even though it's a joke, I'm starting to believe it.

[Brian]

Yeah, that was. Right. That was the initial joke that got what the AI to make it say that. That's hilarious. One serious topic and then we're gonna go after the serious topic. Whenever the Fed comes on, we will switch over. I thought this was really interesting. I kind of tweeted this out. I was like, hey, is AI here? Is AI here? Wild to see this before the holiday season. So then you go to this. I saw these layoffs going on and I thought it was really interesting that UPS and Amazon were the top two. And usually around this time of year, November again, we're about to hit November 1st. Happy Halloween, everybody. For everybody that's going to be celebrating. But we're about to hit November 1st. That's holiday season. Right. Three weeks, four weeks later is Black Friday right into Christmas. UPS, Amazon, FedEx. There's always, especially Amazon UPS. You always hear holiday hires, hey, we're hot. We're hiring 10, 20, 30, 000 people part time for the holiday season. And I guess maybe they'll still do that in the sense that it's a part time hire. I didn't get the details of who these employees are. Were they, are they truck drivers? Are they delivery drivers? Are they, you know, systems people, technology? And you know, obviously with Amazon there's aws, so I'm not sure exactly where the top two are coming from, but I thought those two were really interesting considering the timing of year. And then again, dude, these are some massive companies. Intel, Accenture, Novo, Nordisk, Microsoft, meta. You know, 600 employees doesn't seem like a lot, but you know, Meta doesn't have as many employees as a lot of other bigger companies. Right. So Salesforce 4000, Paramount 2000. Just any, any thoughts around this? I, I don't know. Is this AI? Is this, there's two, there's two thought processes here. Either maybe AI is moving faster than the average person thinks, or is it. Is, is, are these CEOs worried about the state of the economy?

[Brendan]

Yeah, that, that's a great call out here. I didn't really think too deep about it other than when I saw these numbers. It was clear that the labor market was obviously weaker than we wanted it. And the Amazon one, 30,000. I didn't even know about UPS at 48,000. I saw the Amazon one of 30,000 employees. I didn't, I. My initial reaction was like, wow, that's surprising to me because they make so much money. Like you said, they're going into the holiday season. I don't know if I'm on board with like the AI AI taking all these jobs. I would need to think through this a little bit deeper because it's a.

[Brian]

Shock to the economy if that happens too quickly.

[Brendan]

Yeah, that seems like an aggressive standpoint. Now there's definitely been like some integration with like AI and open payment protocols recently. I don't know, we don't have to go down this path. But there's the X402 open payment protocol and integrating AI with micro payments and crypto. So there's definitely a lot of evolution here happening with AI and integrating with crypto. But I don't know, I don't think this has to do with, you know, the AI overtake that everyone seems to be scared of. But these are, these are big numbers.

[Brian]

They're big numbers. And I agree with you right now. But I also think that when it does happen, I think it will be sort of like a little bit of a rug pull situation. Like it's something people are going to talk about and then maybe forget about, but then it's going to come quick. So Maggie saying these are corporate employees. I just saw this this morning, so I didn't get to dive into it too much. Something that we're going to put a note on, definitely follow come back to later. We have Fed Chair Pal. He began about a minute ago, so Brian and I are going to tune out here, put him on. And then obviously the presser is important, but the Q and A is the most important. And then we'll we'll be there to commentate if we hear something, but then at the end we'll wrap it up. So let's tune in here.

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[TiVo]

Continue to Decline in this less dynamic and somewhat softer labor market, the downside risks to employment appear to have risen in recent months. Inflation has eased significantly from its highs in mid 2022, but remains somewhat elevated relative to our 2% longer run goal. Estimates based on the Consumer Price Index suggest that total PCE prices rose 2.8% over the 12 months ending in September and that excluding the volatile food and energy categories, core pce prices rose 2.8% as well. These readings are higher than earlier in the year as inflation for goods has picked up. In contrast, disinflation appears to be continuing for services. Near term measures of inflation expectations have moved up on balance over the course of this year on news about tariffs as reflected in both market and survey based measures. Beyond the next year or two or so, however, most measures of longer term expectations remain consistent with our 2% inflation goal. Our monetary policy actions are guided by our dual mandate to promote maximum employment and stable prices for the American people. At today's meeting, the committee decided to lower the target range for the federal funds rate by a quarter percentage point to 3 and 3/4 to 4%. Higher tariffs are pushing up prices in some categories of goods resulting in higher overall inflation. A reasonable base case is that the effects on inflation will be relatively short lived, a one time shift in the price level. But it is also possible that the inflationary effects could instead be more persistent, and that is a risk to be assessed and managed to. Our obligation is to ensure that a one time increase in the price level does not become an ongoing inflation problem. In the near term, risks to inflation are tilted to the upside and risks to employment to the downside. A challenging situation There is no risk free path for policy as we navigate this tension between our employment and inflation goals. Our framework calls for us to take a balanced approach in promoting both sides of our dual mandate. With downside risks to employment having increased in recent months, the balance of risks has shifted Accordingly, we judged it appropriate at this meeting to take another step toward a more neutral policy stance. With today's decision, we remain well positioned to respond in a timely way to potential economic developments. We will continue to determine the appropriate stance of monetary policy based on the incoming data, the evolving outlook and the balance of risks. We continue to face two sided risks in the Committee's discussions at this meeting, there were strongly differing views about how to proceed in December. A further reduction in the policy rate at the December meeting is not a foregone conclusion. Far from it, policy is not on a preset course. At today's meeting, the Committee also decided to conclude the reduction of our aggregate securities holdings as of December 1st. Our long stated plan has been to stop balance sheet runoff when reserves are somewhat above the level we judge consistent with ample reserve conditions. Signs have clearly emerged that we have reached that standard in money markets. Repo rates have moved up relative to our administered rates, and we have seen more notable pressures on selected dates along with more use of our standing repo facility. In addition, the effective federal funds rate has begun to move up relative to the rate of interest on reserve balances. These developments are what we expected to see as the size of our balance sheet declined and warrant today's decision to cease runoff. Over the three and a half years that we've been shrinking our balance sheet, our securities holdings have declined by $2.2 trillion. As a share of nominal GDP, our balance sheet has fallen from 35% to about 21% in December. We'll enter the next phase of our normalization plans by holding the size of our balance sheet steady for a time. While reserve balances continue to move gradually lower as other non reserve liabilities such as currency keep growing, we will continue to Allow agency securities to run off our balance sheet, and we'll reinvest the proceeds from those securities in treasury bills, furthering progress toward a portfolio consisting primarily of treasury securities. This reinvestment strategy will also help move the weighted average maturity of our portfolio closer to that of the outstanding stock of treasury securities, thus furthering the normalization of the composition of our balance sheet. The Fed has been assigned two goals for monetary policy, maximum employment and stable prices. We remain committed to supporting our maximum employment, bringing our inflation sustainably to our 2% goal, and keeping longer term inflation expectations well anchored. Our success in delivering on these goals matters to all Americans. We understand that our actions affect communities, families and businesses across the country. Everything we do is in service to our public mission. We at the Fed will do everything we can to achieve our maximum employment and price stability goals. Thank you. I look forward to your questions. Nick. Nick Timoros of the Wall Street Journal Are you uncomfortable with how market pricing has assumed a rate cut is a foregone conclusion at your next meeting? Well, I, as I just mentioned, a further reduction in the policy rate of December meeting is not a foregone conclusion, as I've just said. So I would say that that needs to be taken on board. We had, you know, just say this, 19 participants on the committee. Everyone works very hard at this and takes their obligations to serve the American people very seriously. And at a time when we have tension between our two goals, we have, you know, strong views across the committee. And as I mentioned, there were strongly differing views today. And the takeaway from that is that we haven't made a decision about December. And you know, we're going to be looking at the data that we have, how that affects the outlook and the balance of risks. And I'll just say that you and some of your colleagues have framed last month and maybe today I won't put words in your mouth, there's a risk management exercise. At what point do you conclude that you've taken out enough insurance? Are you looking for some kind of improvement in the outlook? Or could this unfold along the lines of last year where you made a sequence of adjustments and waited to gather more information? So the way we have been thinking, well, I've been thinking about it is the, the risks to the two goals. For a very long time, the risk was clearly of higher inflation. And then that has changed now. And as we saw the, particularly after we saw, after the July meeting, we saw downward revisions in job creation. We saw a very different picture of the labor market and suggested that there were higher downside risks to the labor market than we had thought. And that suggested that policy, which we had been holding at a, I would say modestly, other people would say moderately restrictive level, needed to move more in the direction over time of neutral. If the two goals are sort of equally at risk, then you ought to be at neutral because one of them is calling for you to hike and one of them is calling for you to cut. So if that, if that got back into balance, then you'd want to be roughly at neutral. So in that sense, it was a risk management. And I would say the same about today, sort of the same logic. But as I mentioned, going forward is a different thing. Claire? I'm Claire Jones, Financial Times. Thank you for taking this question. We've just heard from you that the discussion in December and the conclusion of the discussion is not a foregone conclusion. I'd like to just dig into that a little bit more about what sort of arguments were brought up. Was there any consideration, for instance, of the investment we're seeing in AI and some of the generation of household wealth through rises in stock prices related to the AI boom? Thank you. You know, I wouldn't say that's a, that's, that's a factor in everyone's assessment of the economy. I wouldn't say it's the driving factor, I don't think for anybody. You know, I guess I would say it this way once again. I would just point out that we have the situation where the risks are to the upside for inflation and to, to the downside for employment. We have one tool. It can't do both of those. You can't address both those at once. You've got a very different situation. So you have some people, people have different forecasts, right? So they'll forecast faster or slower progress on one or the other. And they also have different levels of risk aversion. And some will be more averse to inflation overruns and some will be more averse to underruns of employment. And so you put that together and as you can see from the sep and from the public discussion that goes on between the meetings, when participants go out and talk, they're very disparate views. And they were reflected in strongly differing views in today's meeting, as I pointed out in my remarks. And that's what leads me to say that, you know, that we haven't made a decision about, about December. You know, I always say that it's a fact that we don't make decisions in advance, but this is, I'M saying something in addition here is that it's not, it's not to be seen as a foregone conclusion. In fact, far from it. Can I just ask a quick follow up on qt? How much of the fund impressions we've seen in money markets are related to the US treasury issuing more short term debt? That could be one of the factors. But the reality is we've seen the things that we've seen higher repo rates and federal funds rate moving up. These are the very things that we look for. We actually have a framework for looking at what the place we're trying to reach. What we said for a long time now is that when we feel like we're a little bit or a bit above what we consider a level that's ample, that we would freeze the size of the balance sheet. Of course, reserves will continue to decline from that point forward as non reserve liabilities grow. So this happened some of it, some things have been happening for some time now showing a gradual tightening in money market conditions. Really in the last, call it three weeks or so, you've seen more significant tightening and I think a clear assessment that, that we're at that place. The other thing is, you know, we're, we're, the balance sheet is shrinking at a very, very slow pace now. We've, we've reduced it by half, twice. And so there's not a lot of benefit to be, you know, to be holding on for to get the last few dollars because you know, again, the balance sheets reserves are going to continue to shrink as non reserves grow. So, so you know, there was support on the committee as we thought about it, to go ahead with this and announce effective December 1st that we will be freezing the size of the balance sheet. And the December 1st date gives the markets a little bit of time to adapt. Colby, thank you. Colby Smith with the New York Times. So much of the rationale for cutting interest rates even as inflation moves away from the 2% target seems to be, you know, that there are these mounting downside risks to the labor market. But if those don't materialize and the labor market either stabilizes around current employment levels or even starts to strengthen somewhat, how would that change your perception of how much interest rates need to fall from here? Would you then be a bit more concerned about underlying inflation and the possibility of second round effects from tariffs? Yeah, I mean in principle, if, if you were to see data that suggested the labor market strengthening or even that it's stabilizing, you know, that would certainly play into our decisions going forward. So, and we do have, you know, we get some data. The labor market is a place where we get, for example, we get the state level data on initial claims which, which are sending a sort of a signal of more of the same. We also get job openings and we'll get lots of survey data. We'll get the beige book and things like that. So we'll have a, we'll have a picture of what's going on in the labor market. And you know, the fact that we're not seeing an uptick in claims or a downtick really in openings suggest that you're seeing maybe continued very gradual cooling, but nothing more than that. So that does give you some comfort. But if this shutdown lasts a while longer and you don't have that data in hand, I'm just wondering how that hinders the committee's ability to assess the state of the labor market and make the right policy decisions. And also how much is that factoring into the debate about December?

[Brendan]

Yeah.

[TiVo]

So, you know, will we get, we get, like I mentioned, what we get in the labor area. We get some data in the inflation, some data in economic activity, and we'll get, we'll have a picture of what's going on. We also will have the beige book. Again, I would say we're not going to be able to have the, you know, the detailed feel of, of things, but I think if there were a significant or a material change in the economy one way or another, I think we'd, I think we'd pick that up through this. So in terms of how it might affect December, it's really hard to say December's, you know, this, the meeting's like a six weeks away. We just don't know what we're going to get. If, if there is a very high level of uncertainty, then, you know, that could be an argument in favor of caution about moving, but we'll have to see how it unfolds. Steve? STEVE LIESMAN, CNBC Mr. Chairman, can you characterize the meeting in terms of you said strongly differing views. Was this a close call, this cut, or was it a close call, maybe the other way, because you had dissents on both sides. Thanks. So I was referring to the discussion about, to the extent it related to December. You saw we had two dissents, one for 50 and one for no cut. So, you know, that was a strong solid vote in favor of this cut. The strongly differing views were really about, about the future. What does that look like? And I think people are saying, you know, they're noticing stronger economic activity. You know, forecasters generally, broadly have raised their economic growth forecast for this year and next year in some cases quite materially. In the meantime, we see, you know, a labor market that's kind of, I don't want to say stable, but it's, it's, it's not clearly in motion, it's not clearly declining quickly. In any case, it may be just continuing to gradually cool. And again, people have different, they have different forecasts and expectations about the economy and different, different risk tolerances. And so there's a, you know, you read the sep, you read the speeches, you know, there are different views on the committee and to the point where I, where I said what I said just to follow up on the balance sheet, if you stop it, the runoff now, does that mean you have to go back to actually adding assets sometime next year so that the balance sheet doesn't shrink as a percentage GDP and become a tightening factor? So you're right. The place we'll be on December 1st is that the size of the balance sheet is frozen. And as mortgage backed securities mature, we'll reinvest those in treasury bills, which will foster both a more treasury balance sheet and also a shorter duration. So that's what, in the meantime, if you freeze the size of the balance sheet, the non reserve liabilities, currency, for example, they're going to continue to grow organically. And because the size of the balance sheet is frozen, you have further shrinkage in reserves. And reserves is the thing that we're managing that has to be ample. So that'll happen for a time, but not a tremendously long time. We don't know exactly how long, but at a certain point you'll want to start, grow, you want to start reserves to start gradually growing to keep up with, you know, the size of the banking system and the size of the economy. So we'll be adding reserves at a certain point and that's the, that's the last point. Even then we'll be, will be. We didn't make decisions about this today, but we did talk today about the composition of the balance sheet and there's a desire that the, that the balance sheet be. Right now it's got a lot more duration than the outstanding universe of treasury securities and we want to move to a place where we're closer to that duration. That'll take some time. We haven't made a decision about the ultimate endpoint, but we all agree that we want to move more in the direction of a balance sheet that more closely reflects the outstanding Treasuries and that means a shorter duration balance sheet. Now this is something that's going to take a long time and move very, very gradually. I don't think you'll notice it in market conditions, but that's the direction of things. Jonnell Janelle Marte with Bloomberg. How are officials interpreting the latest CPI report? So some components came in lower than expected, but core inflation was still at 3%. So at this moment what are you learning about the drivers? And also where do you view that.

[Brendan]

The risks are greater that the Fed.

[TiVo]

Makes a mistake on employment or inflation? So okay, so the September CPI report, we didn't get PPE after that, which is, which is important for translation into what we look at, which is PCE inflation. But we can still make a pretty good assessment of what that will be when we get ppi. There might be some adjustments, but so directionally, you know, it was a little softer than expected and we always break it down into the three components. So basically you've seen goods prices increasing and that's really due to tariffs and that's due, that's compared to a longer run trend of very, very mild deflation in goods. So that's moving inflation up. On the other side of that, good news that housing services inflation has, has been coming down and is expected to continue to come down. So if you remember a year a couple of years ago, that's the one that just we kept expecting it to do that. Now it's doing, it's been doing that for some time and we expect to continue that. That leaves the biggest category is services other than housing services and that's kind of been moving sideways over the last few months. But a significant part of that is non market services. We don't take a lot of signal about the Titan City economy from that. So if you add all that up, a couple of things to say. One is that inflation away from tariffs is actually not so far from our 2% goal. We estimate people have different estimates of what that is, but it might be, you know, five or six tenths and so that, you know, if it's 2.8 then you know, core PCE not including tariffs might be 2.3 or 2.4 in that range, something like that. So that's not so far from your goal. So that we look at that and the thing about tariff inflation is the base case is that it will come and it probably will increase further, but it is that it will be a one time increase. And you know, we've been very focused for all of this year at making sure that that's the case and thinking carefully about what are the, what are the pathways through which it could become something else troublesome inflation. One of those would be, you know, a really tight labor market. We don't see that. Another could be inflation expectations moving. We don't see that. So I think, you know, we're, we're watching this very carefully. I think it's, it's not the case that we're just assuming that it's going to be one time inflation. We understand fully this is a risk we have to monitor and ultimately manage. With the stubborn in services inflation. What are some of the things that the Fed could do to address that? And especially when we're seeing potentially labor supply challenges. Sorry, say that first the stubborn services inflation that you mentioned. Service inflation. Yeah. Well again the part of services inflation that is, that isn't coming down as we would like it to is the non market part of non housing services. And you know, overall that, that's just something that, that we, we expect will come down. The non housing, the non market part of it should come down. It largely reflects higher stock prices and I mean financial services that are imputed rather than actually paid is, is a big part of that. But also just, you know, we think policy is still modestly restrictive in my telling. So that's the kind of thing that should lead to a gradually cooling economy. That's one of the reasons you see a gradually cooling labor market is because, you know, the Fed policy is modestly restrictive. So that, that should also help get that. I want to say though, we're absolutely committed to returning inflation to 2%. If you look at longer term surveys or market pricing, you will see that, that that's a credible commitment and there should be no question that that's, that that's where we're going. Chris.

[Brendan]

Great. Thank you. Chris Rugaber at Associated Press. So there's a big investment boom in AI infrastructure right now, as you know, and wondering if the existence of such a boom would indicate that rates are.

[TiVo]

Not that restrictive after all.

[Brendan]

And could further rate cuts at this point perhaps fuel an excess level of.

[TiVo]

Investment there or market bubbles?

[Brendan]

How is the Fed thinking about that?

[TiVo]

So I don't think that the. You're right. There's a lot of data centers being built and other investments being made around the country and around the world. And big US companies are just investing a lot of resources in thinking about how AI, which will be based on those data centers run through data centers, is going to affect their businesses. So it's a big deal. I don't think that the spending that happens to build data centers all over the country is especially interest sensitive. It's based on longer run, it's, you know, longer run assessments that this is an area where there's going to be a lot of investment and that's going to drive higher productivity and that sorts of things. I don't know how those investments will work out, but I don't think they're particularly interest sensitive compared to some of the other sectors.

[Brendan]

And then just a quick follow up, you mentioned that you do have data that you're looking at for inflation and growth in the absence of government data. Could you give us a sense, I.

[TiVo]

Think we know a lot about the.

[Brendan]

Jobs data that's out there. Can you give us a sense of.

[TiVo]

What you're looking at to track inflation in the absence of government data?

[Brendan]

Thank you.

[TiVo]

So it's a lot of things and it doesn't replace government data. But you know, you know, all of these, it's, you know, it's, I'll just mention some of the many, many names, price stats, Adobe and others. And for wage inflation, there's ADP data on spending. You're going to ask about spending at some point. You know, there are lots of other things that we look at, but it's again, it's, it's many, many different sources. And again, including what we get out of the, of the Beige Book, which will be sort of come out mid cycle as always and it doesn't, doesn't replace the government data, but it gives us a picture. Again, I think if something material were happening, if there were material developments, I think we would pick that up. I don't think we'll be able to have the very, very granular understanding of the economy while this, while this data is not available. Howard Schneider with our Reuters. Thank you.

[Brian]

I just want you to elaborate a.

[TiVo]

Little bit on what you said a moment ago about, about the lack, a continued shutdown making it more difficult to make a move in December. And that may make you more cautious to the degree you are relying on private data that isn't the gold standard or that you're relying on your own surveys of the Beige Book. Do you worry at some point you're going to stop, have to start making policy by anecdote? You know, this is a temporary state of affairs and you know, we're going to do our jobs. We're going to collect every scrap of data we can find, evaluated and think carefully about it. And that's that's our jobs. That's what we're going to do. If you ask me, could, could it affect the, the, you know, the December meeting? I'm not saying it's going to, but yeah, you could imagine that, that, you know, what do you do if, what do you do? And if you're driving in the fog, you slow down. So that could or could not. I don't, I don't know how that's going to play into things. We may get the data may come back, but there's a, there's a possibility that it would make sense to be more cautious about moving. I'm not, I'm not committing to that. I'm just saying it's certainly a possibility that you would say we really can't see. So let's, let's slow down. As a follow up in the debate in this meeting, we saw recently some pretty big layoff announcements coming from Amazon and others wondering if that figured into the discussion at all that you're starting to see this tension between growth and employment starting to be resolved to the detriment of employment. And secondly, some of the stress is starting to appear in the bottom spur of the K, as they call it, household health premiums that are going to be, possibly be going up quite substantially. Things like that. Has that started to become a factor in your policy discussion? So those are, those are both things, you know, that we're watching very, very, very carefully. To start with the layoffs, you're right. You see a significant number of companies either announcing that they are not going to be doing much hiring or actually doing layoffs. And much of the time they're talking about AI and what it can do. So we're watching that very carefully. And you know, yes, it could absolutely have implications for job creation. We don't really see it in the, in the initial claims data yet. Now it's not a surprise that we don't. It takes some time for it to get in there, but we're watching that really carefully. But again, don't see it yet. In the initial claims data on the K shaped economy thing, I would say the same thing or similar thing. If you listen to the earnings calls or the reports of big public consumer facing companies, many, many of them are saying that there's a bifurcated economy there and that consumers at the lower end are struggling and buying less and shifting to lower cost products, but that at the top people are spending at the higher income and wealth and they're so you so much, much anecdotal data on that. And so we think there's something there. So.

[Brian]

Edward.

[TiVo]

Thank you. Edward Lawrence with fox business. So, Mr. Chairman, I want to take another crack at the, at the further reduction in rates is not a foregone conclusion. So in December he said far from it. So if a cut might not be on the table for December because of lack of data, what is the other concerns then stem from? So if it's not lack of data as the reason December is not a foreground conclusion, what other things could be the concern then? Well, the perspectives of people on the committee that, you know, We've now moved 150 basis points and that we're down into, you know, you're into the, but that range between 3 and 4 where most estimates of many estimates of the neutral rate live in that 3 to 4%. Here you're there. Now you're above the median number for the committee. But I think there are people on the committee who have higher estimates of the neutral rate. And that's, you know, you can argue these positions since it can't be directly observed, the neutral rate. So, you know, I think for, for, for some part of the committee, you know, it's time to maybe take a step back and, and, and see whether there, there really are downside risks to the labor market or see whether in fact, the growth that the stronger growth that we're seeing is is real. Ordinarily, the labor market is a better indicator of the momentum of the economy than the spending data. That's the lore in this case that gives a more downbeat read. So people just have, you know, they're again, we've cut 50 more basis points in the last two meetings. And there was a sense like let's form some, let's, let's, let's pause here kind of thing, and a sense from others wanting to go ahead. But that's why I say differing views, strongly differing views. And so on that division, then you're talking about going forward. So what's more important in this division? Is it inflation risks? Is it employment risk, or is there a deeper philosophy division among the board? Look, everybody on the committee is deeply committed to doing the right thing to achieve our goals, maximum employment and stable prices. You have differences on how to do that. And as I mentioned, some of that is different forecasts, but a lot of it is also different risk aversions to the different variables, which is common through, you know, through all Federal Reserves there, there did people just have different risk tolerances, let's say. So that leads you to people with disparate views. You will know that from the speeches you've been listening to from my colleagues. And, and so we're at a place now where we have in fact, cut two more times. And, you know, we're now we're 150 basis points closer to neutral, wherever that may be, than we were a year ago. And so there's a growing chorus now of feeling like maybe this is where we should at least wait a cycle, something like that. That's what it is. It's just what you think it would be. And again, you've seen it in the September summer of economic projections. You've seen this in the public remarks of FOMC participants. And now I'm telling you that's what you can expect that in the minutes. And I'm just telling you that's what happened in the meeting. Elizabeth, thank you so much.

[Brendan]

Elizabeth Scholsley with ABC News.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

What is your explanation for why the.

[TiVo]

Job market is weakening right now?

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

And what will this rate cut do.

[TiVo]

To improve the job market? So the. I think the. There are two things affecting the job market, and one of them is just a dramatic reduction in the supply of new workers. So, and that's two things. That's declining labor force participation, which is a cyclical thing. And then there's declining immigration, which is just a big policy change that actually began in the last administration and has been accelerated now. So a big part of the whole story is that that supply side story.

[Brian]

Okay, all right, we're gonna tune out here, so we have time for a recap. If you're interested in continuing to watch the presser, plenty of places you could do it. If you're interested in doing a little Q A. If you want to get involved in the chat, throw us your opinions, ask some questions. Brian and I are going to give kind of our thoughts of what we just listened to. I think the meat and potatoes of there. That last question I thought was pretty direct. It's like, hey, if you're not on the path of cutting and credit to us, credit to the show. Did you see Amazon? Did you see ups? You see all these job cuts coming out of left field today? You know, how are you gonna say that, that you want to support the labor market and then you don't know what you're gonna do when you see some of the biggest companies in the world slicing and dicing jobs like your Bobby Filet on the, you know, Beat Bobby Filet TV show over at the cutlery cutlery station. So some good questions there. I thought Again, PAL is pretty stoic in my mind. Brian, let's break this down. Kind of off the jump. As soon as we went live, PAL started talking, the questions started coming and the market started nuking. During that live there, $300 million were liquidated from the crypto market alone. The S P and the NASDAQ both took a quick nosedive. My hot take market makers are dirty, dirty boys. They're dirty players, man. That felt like an absolute hunt because by the time that we're talking now, it's basically bouncing back for the most part, especially in the S P and Nasdaq and in the crypto markets too. It felt like, you know, everybody loves their leverage. We learned that from the last leverage, historic leverage event. I felt like everybody kind of knew that the cut was coming. So you load up on those short dated calls and you know, you leverage out for a short term. And I felt like a lot of people just got hunted right there. But any, any quick thoughts on that downward price action?

[Brendan]

Yeah, it felt like a little bit of an overreaction to me. You know, we all knew the 25 bips was coming. I mean, right, right when we started, he, the quote was, there's no guarantee we'll cut rates in December. The decision will depend entirely on data. And then he acknowledged the dissent from, you know, a couple members. One wanted a 25, wanted a 50 bips rate cut and the other wanted just to stay neutral. But it felt like the market just kind of nuked for no reason there, or I shouldn't say nuked, but took a nosedive. But we, we saw a quick rebound pretty quickly, five, ten minutes after that. And I was curious what the odds are for three rate cuts by the end of the year. We did go down a few percentage points according to Polymark. And I looked at cme, but nothing crazy. Personally, I didn't think Powell was going to come out and say like, hey, we're 100% going to have rate cuts come in December. He's not the type of guy to say that, but he definitely was very stoked. Like you said, his language said that December, it's possible we'll see a, we'll see a rate cut, but nothing's penciled in.

[Brian]

Yeah, he, he used the term, he's used this before of, with tariffs of driving into the fog. There was one presser that he did use that language and sent the markets into a tailspin when, you know, this data dependent Fed doesn't know where it's driving, driving its car through the fog. So the market doesn't like, talks like that. Yeah, I, I mean, again, we know who the, you know, we know and we've talked about this, how it, you know, I, I think all, all things, even I, you know, personal take. I think Jerome Powell at least is a great voice for the Fed. Again, I'm sure he has his, you know, political opinions and whatnot, but I think as a leader, you know, you can't fault him for going up there and trying to at least lead the Fed. Obviously, the governors is a different story. I think you have a lot of people that are choosing their political bias and you can kind of hear that from their sound bites. Obviously. I'm sure the person who doesn't want to cut at all is, is more leaning left, and I'm sure the person that wants to cut 50 basis points is, you know, marching right in line with, with, you know, the right and Trump's rhetoric. So it'll be interesting. I think definitely, this Fed meeting leading up to it, it definitely felt like the least. I don't know if exciting is the right word, but like we didn't really know. We were more interested in what was going to happen. It felt like that wasn't really the case. It's always interesting, but this one had a little less stakes on the table. It feels like the stakes have definitely ramped up for the next Fed meeting leading into the end of the year. Probably the Santa Claus rally is going to hinge on that Q4. We'll see. Sometimes it takes a day for everybody to digest, and then there's a period, obviously, where you don't get much Fed speak. So maybe when the, you know, when people are away, the mice will play type of thing. I don't know. I, I kind of feel like this is what we say a lot of times with these things, is the initial reaction either way is, is whether it goes up or down is, is kind of an overreaction. You got to take it, you got to let the dust settle, and then you can kind of make your decisions where you want to go with it. But I just, with, with the December 1st of, you know, quantitative, quantitative tightening is coming to an end. The Fed balance sheet and the quantitative easing and rate cuts, it's like, I don't know, it feels like a don't overreact type of scenario and possibly kind of. We've talked about crypto, specifically how we feel like this could be a cycle that kind of extends on a little more just because you have tradfi and the ETFs and things are moving kind of slower. And then again with the Fed, the cycle of the Fed, does that extend. With the easing. Does that extend the cycle a little bit? A little bit more? Jaker says, are we still in a government shutdown? Yes, we are. We are in the government shutdown. So that's what he was saying is if they're not getting the data, especially in the future for the next rate decision, that could kind of be that fog. Driving in the fog and not knowing where they're going. I saw here that. Yeah. The lack of data. You know, this just posted. Same thing with the fog. The lack of data through the shutdown could affect the December rate cut. So, you know, I don't know. Not much, not much else to break down. The price action seems to be bouncing a little bit. Looks like the NASDAQ's back in the positive. The S P bitcoin took a little tumble there. But any. Any final thoughts on the Fed, Brian, before we move on and we can, I think we give the people a little maybe pump fun. We talk about a little polymark. We'll give him a little Brian special before we head out of here.

[Brendan]

Yeah, I love that. And I just think initially once he mentioned there was no guarantee December there was gonna be a rate cut, wasn't surprised. He said that kind of the Tony came out and said that. I literally brought up CoinMarketCap and I was like, there we go. We're gonna be tumbling a little bit of an overreaction. But I think as core minds prevail, we saw that bounce back and it's just kind of further endorses my point that I think we're gonna see a little bit of a chop for a little bit longer, for a few more weeks. And you nailed it. TiVo, you said there's a little bit more on the line here. The stakes are a little higher for December's rate cut. I 100% agree with that. It's going to be a super interesting one. I still expect a rate cut and I think the market in some of the prediction markets are kind of saying the same thing, but it's not nearly as baked in. But what, what did we expect he was going to say at the end of the day, you know, he, he was going to kind of be pow. How he, how he acts and he does handle himself well. So not surprised. We saw that initial dip, but I don't think we're going to be too hung up on it for too long. We're already coming back.

[Brian]

Yeah, yeah. I agree with you. I mean, credit to us. We were, you know, letting the people listen to the, the word right from the horse's mouth, but we were going back and forth just like this feels like a complete overreaction. And again, I think some of these market makers are absolutely ruthless and they see all the leverage. You know, your average couple retail traders think they're going to get that quick hit with a bump because they know a rate cut's coming. Yeah, that's, that's a lot of times not how it works. But let's, let's leave the people with a couple fun points. Last call for questions in the right there. If you want to ask Brian a question or myself, drop it in and then let's pull up here. What was this? The Pump Fun link, Brian? Something with.

[Brendan]

Yeah, Pump funds just looks.

[Brian]

There we go.

[Brendan]

Yeah, pump. Pump funds looked good with all the, this X402 talk about integration with payment rails with agents and then the sole ETF starting to make things look good. I'm just a big pump fun guy and I think the chart is starting to form a little bit of a cup and handle. It's starting to look pretty good in my eyes. So threw that on the sheet because I know a lot of our listeners ask about Pumped Fun a lot. A lot of people in our community, we talk about it a lot. For everyone that may not know they're the leading meme coin platform on Solana, but they're doing a lot more. They're trying to bring streaming over there. They're kind of a cornerstone of Solana. So when Solana starts to go up, Pump fund starts to go up. We've seen a lot of challengers challenge Pump Fund, it just keeps on losing and they hit a, they hit about 5 billion recently and they were leading a lot of the altcoins with just continued buybacks. They're hammering the buyback button and it looks strong in my opinion.

[Brian]

Yeah, just I think that we've covered Pump Fund from the, you know, obviously since it's been around from the craziness of it all to the token launch to their wild commercial. You know, again, if you're interested in Brian and Joe's private community, stay on top of the momentum money makers. You know, that link is always in the description for a trial. Let's see. Last call for questions. How are the technicals looking from this quick dip based on longer time frame formations. We'll, you know, Maggie May, we're have to save that one for Brendan early next week. Our technical Analysis. Who is the man again? I think we need to let this shake out overnight. But I don't see anything crazy happening from that press conference. Just a quick hit. I just got an alert. Pal says AI is not the same as the dot com bubble. You're starting to hear a lot of people, hey, we're in a bubble, we're in a bubble. But again, I personally do agree with that as well because you go back to dot com bubble, I mean you're looking at companies that had evaluations much higher than Nvidia, much higher than Microsoft and Meta, and they had no profits. I think the dot com bubble, again, you have a seniority over me. But from studying it and looking back in history, it seems like that was such a unique point in time. And not to say that we can't get back there, especially with AI, but it's kind of like the housing crisis in a way. It's like the dot com bubble, the housing crisis. A lot of these things were just in a wild way, stupid learning experiences and borderline fraud. Like 2008, everybody kind of saying like, oh, the housing market's too high, it's going to crash. Like 2008, it's like not, not necessarily because that was fraud. Like yes, prices, yeah, prices can be too high. Definitely. There could be a 1020 correction for sure. But there's also people that aren't getting three mortgages that don't have a pulse anymore. Right? Like this person's dead and they got three mortgages last month. That's not happening anymore. And the same thing with the dot com bubble. If we bring it back to equities, there were, it's like all you had to do was Slap a.com on your name. Now pets.com today is a real company, but back then it was just like, hey, pets.com popcorn.com this.com. you just threw a.com on it and you had millions of dollars, you know, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars of investment coming your way and you weren't profitable. So there's a ton of companies that their stocks blew up and there was no business behind it. And so while you can say yes, maybe some evaluations are stretched, especially if you're looking at to Palantir, but we're not. Palantir is a very, very successful company and bringing in tons and tons and tons of revenue with unique products. And then talk about Nvidia. I think the coolest thing is if people want to go do the research, go look at Nvidia's Forward PE and compare it to Walmart and Costco. Like Costco and Walmart are trading at 4550 PE. I think Nvidia right now is maybe at like 30. So it's like you know, Costco and Walmart are overvalued and in a bubble. If Nvidia, I mean it's, it's an interesting time. Let me see. I see a couple more chats. Maggie May disagrees. Okay. I love that feel, feel early investors in AI will struggle but long term will work. Good take. Does the, does this conference chain press conference maybe change something except some doubts regarding Semper cuts for us? Okay, let's end on that. Mike Serray, does this press conference from PAL change anything except the doubts for the rate cuts? It's a good summary of the show. I don't think it changes anything. Again, you saw that quick kind of wick down to go liquidate a bunch of people. Now we're kind of hovering back up. Yeah, I think it's something that we're going to monitor. You're going to want to watch this Fed speak. We'll do that for you as the months go on here, the weeks go on. But I don't think you should make can't go out and make some crazy decisions from this press conference today. Brian, your final thoughts?

[Brendan]

Yeah, I, I agree 100 with you. I, I, I Nothing in this press conference really surprised me all that much. Of course I would love a little bit, I would love for him to have been like hey, we're doing another rate cut in December and we just take off flying.

[Brian]

But that, that was like it would have been, he wouldn't say that obviously but like that would have been wild. That would have been crazy.

[Brendan]

That's so unrealistic. I actually thought he handled himself pretty good. I still expect personally a rate cut going into December and I think the market expects it as well. But nothing out of this press conference really surprised me. And we'll see in your take on the dot com stuff is interesting. I could go both ways on there as well because sometimes I joke that if anybody wanted to make a multimillion dollar corporation, they just come up with a good idea and throw AI behind it.

[Brian]

Could we get there? That's the question.

[Brendan]

I don't it's not there yet.

[Brian]

It could happen. It could totally happen. But it's not there yet. And probably the last bubble would have been you would be, you know, again we don't, we love crypto. We believe in crypto but you know Some of these altcoins, especially towards the end of the last cycle, you know, there's some things that just aren't around anymore. And it was like, okay, well what was the basis behind these projects? So again, you got to learn from the history of it. But yeah, we're definitely not there yet, but we 100% could be. But, you know, and, and if you do get there, does it get to the point where you're too euphoric and everything's going to keep going up and you don't, you don't realize it? Possibly.

[Brendan]

Yeah, we, we've all been there, but I, I think we, everyone's getting a little bit more sophisticated. We learn a little bit more every time, like when something like that happens. But yeah, I, I don't think we're there yet by any means.

[Brian]

And everything moves faster now. And that's just how life is. Again, we're on our phones and we're just scroll, scroll, scroll. Our attention span zero. Everybody has the ability to go and get the information like me and you, super informed people and we love everybody that's tuning in with our subscribers across all of our platforms. But people like me and you couldn't be doing shows like this 25, 30 years ago. The information was gatekeeped. You couldn't go online and, and build, you know, your knowledge base like you can today. And then I just feel like again, these, the bear markets are shorter, the bull markets are, are faster. Like everything's moving at such a fast pace. And again, that's why we truly believe that you need a community of people to do it. So if you're interested in doing that, always check the links in the description if you want to get more involved. We have some trials going on as we head into the end of the year here and then if not, always subscribe. So hit the subscribe button, hit the like button. We really appreciate you guys tuning in. Over an hour and 15 minutes today, Brian. We were live for the people. I gotta go finish this move. It's been an absolute pleasure being with you guys here today. This is officially the last podcast in my old home. Next week we will be in the new and, I don't know, hopefully improved studio. We'll see. It might take a couple weeks to get that set up, but always a pleasure being with you, Brian. Thank you to everybody for tuning in. We are going to be back next week with more great content. Thank you so much everybody. Happy Halloween and enjoy your day. Goodbye everybody.

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